oney when this is gone."

Santiago obeyed. There was nothing else for him to do.

Elena lay in her bed, scarcely touching food. Poor child! her nature
demanded nothing of life but love, and that denied her, she could
find no reason for living. She was not sport-loving like Joaquin, nor
practical like Francisca, nor learned like Santiago, nor ambitious
to dance through life like her many nieces. She was but a clinging
unreasoning creature, with warm blood and a great heart. But she no
longer prayed to have Dario given her. It seemed to her that after such
suffering her saddened and broken spirit would cast its shadows over her
happiest moments, and she longed only for death.

Her mother, becoming alarmed at her increasing weakness, called in an
old woman who had been midwife and doctor of the county for half a
century. She came, a bent and bony woman who must have been majestic in
her youth. Her front teeth were gone, her face was stained with dark
splashes like the imprint of a pre-natal hand. Over her head she wore a
black shawl; and she looked enough like a witch to frighten her patients
into eternity had they not been so well used to her. She prodded Elena
all over as if the girl were a loaf of bread and her knotted fingers
sought a lump of flour in the dough.

"The heart," she said to Dona Jacoba with sharp emphasis, her back teeth
meeting with a click, as if to proclaim their existence. "I have no
herbs for that," and she went back to her cabin by the ocean.

That night Elena lifted her head suddenly. From the hill opposite her
window came the sweet reverberation of a guitar: then a voice, which,
though never heard by her in song before, was as unmistakable as if it
had serenaded beneath her window every night since she had known Dario
Castanares.

EL ULTIMO ADIOS

"Si dos con el alma
Se amaron en vida,
Y al fin se separan
En vida las dos;
Sabeis que es tan grande
Le pena sentida
Que con esa palabra
Se dicen adios.
Y en esa palabra
Que breve murmura,
Ni verse prometen
Niamarse se juran;
Que en esa palabra
Se dicen adios.
No hay queja mas honda,
Suspiro mas largo;
Que aquellas palabras
Que dicen adios.
Al fin ha llegado,
La muerte en la vida;
Al fin para entrambos
Muramos los dos:
Al fin ha llegado
La hora cumplida,
Del ultimo adios.
Ya nunca en la vida,
Gentil companera
Ya nunca volveremos
A vernos los dos:
Por eso es tan tris