GERTRUDIS revived from the swoon of her suffering, chilled by the cold tiles of the floor. There was a struggle in her consciousness for a little while against the confusion of what seemed a departing dream, followed by a clearing, revealing with sudden remembrance all that had passed. Juan; she had perfected her appeal to heaven for Juan.
She thought of him with a welling tenderness which mounted in a sweep to an intensity that was almost a pain. Where was Juan? What if her poor sacrifice for him had failed! It was a terrifying thought. She would stand rebuked for her unworthiness; some offering more precious than her devotion, her prayers, the pain of her body and its blood, would be required, and she had no more to give.
It seemed that she had failed, indeed, or Juan would have come to comfort her, and lift her head to his bosom and caress away her fears. The thought troubled her; it lashed her with hot surge of anxiety that beat in her temples and burned in her cheeks, to fall again in a breath, like a sudden fire in a handful of grass, leaving her too cold to warm a little hope. Shame had come to overwhelm her and confront her with the appalling insuffictency of the sacrifice which she had held so dear.
Otherwise Juan would have come.
There was no pain in her torn, bruised knees, but a numbness and a cold throbbing, a heaviness as of stone when she tried to lift herself and pray. She sank down again prostrate, her cheek to the rough tiles, hollowed before the altar by the feet of so many burdened ones who had come to kneel and pray. She stretched there, her arms reaching out in piteous appeal, too weak, too spent, too crushed and bruised and sorrowful in the shadow of the dark belief that she had failed, to murmur one more little prayer to cap the golden sheaves of the supplications she had sent before.
It was certain now that she had failed, or Juan would have come.
How long had she lain there? What was the hour? She was so weary, spent and cold! Tears that came on her cheeks were cold tears; warmth had gone out of the world with hope and faith. How could she struggle to her feet and go to Doña Magdalena's house, and to her bed under the window where the sun came in at morning? How could she ever return to face them all: Padre Ignacio—who had not shared her confidence in the sufficiency of this ordeal—Doña Magdalena, and poor Juan. She had been denied. Our Señora had not taken compassion; she had not bent down out of her place in heaven to hear.
Juan would have come if this had availed. Juan would have come.
It was a dream, she said; the great sacrifice had not been attempted, she was asleep in her bed, driven by the horrible distractions of a senseless dream. She struggled to defeat it, beating with resentful weakness to break its insane illusion, fighting to rise as one drowning fights to cleave the waters and plunge into the sun, if only to see the world again and confirm his unhappy fate. She fought the smothering specter with all her strength, yet without a twitch of a poor cold finger, a convulsion of a tear-wet lid.
She lay as nerveless as one dead, and sank, and sank, under the pressure of what she resented with her last gleam of thought as a dream.
Juan Molinero did not understand, when he came to her there prostrate in the dim lights of the altar, what this sacrifice for him had been. He saw the pitiful trail of blood across the tiles from the door, the dark stain on her bare feet. He was weak in the shaking of a terrible fear as he fell to his knees beside her, and touched her cheek in the agony of his life's greatest dread.
"Tula! Tula!" he pleaded, bending over her, his voice in her ear.
So it was she broke the trammeling meshes of the dream that was not a dream.
She felt him lift her, and was serene as if an angel had stooped out of heaven to bear her to paradise. Juan stood holding her in his arms, the light of the altar candles on his face. She lifted her hand weakly, like the flutter of a wounded bird that struggles to take wing. He took her hand and guided it, understanding her desire. She touched his eyelids, and stroked his face with her numb cold fingers, wonder growing in her eyes. She smiled, and sighed, and drew close to him, this renascence of faith and thankfulness giving strength to her arms to clasp them about his neck, and cling as if she had plunged upward out of the waters to the glad sunlight of day, to find a rock in the midst of the deep.