Now that the Senorita seemed to be deserted, unhappy,
prostrated, she had no room for anything but pity for her; but let
Alessandro come on the stage again, and all would be changed.
The old hostility would return. It was but a dubious sort of ally,
after all, that Ramona had so unexpectedly secured in Margarita.
She might prove the sharpest of broken reeds.
It was sunset of the eighteenth day since Alessandro's departure.
Ramona had lain for four days well-nigh motionless on her bed.
She herself began to think she must be going to die. Her mind
seemed to be vacant of all thought. She did not even sorrow for
Alessandro's death; she seemed torpid, body and soul. Such
prostrations as these are Nature's enforced rests. It is often only by
help of them that our bodies tide over crises, strains, in which, if
we continued to battle, we should be slain.
As Ramona lay half unconscious,-- neither awake nor yet asleep,--
on this evening, she was suddenly aware of a vivid impression
produced upon her; it was not sound, it was not sight. She was
alone; the house was still as death; the warm September twilight
silence reigned outside, She sat up in her bed, intent -- half
alarmed -- half glad -- bewildered -- alive.
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