im. A few birds moved among the
leaves, but the heat made them lazy, and they did not sing.

After a few moments, Magdalena's glance swept the wall of leaves that
surrounded her; then she took a pencil and a roll of foolscap from her
pocket. She had made up her mind that the time had come for her first
essay in fiction. For two years and a half she had studied and thought
to this end; too reverent to criticise, but taking the creators'
structures to pieces as best she could and giving all attention to parts
and details.

She had had a nebulous idea in her mind for some time. It had troubled
her that it did not assume definite form, but she trusted to that
inspiration of the pen of which she had read much.

Her hand trembled so that she could not write for a few moments. She put
the pencil down, not covering her face with her hands as a more
demonstrative girl would have done, but biting her lips. Her heart beat
suffocatingly. For the first time she fully realised what the power to
write would mean to her. Her religion had gone, that dear companion of
many years; she had practised faithfully until six months ago, when she
had asked her teacher to tell her father that she could never become
even a third-rate musician; and Don Roberto had, after a caustic hour,
concluded that he would "throw no more good money after bad;" she had
had long and meaning conferences with her mirror, conjuring up phantasms
of the beautiful dead women of her race, and decided sadly that the
worship of man was not for her. She had never talked for ten consecutive
minutes with a young man; but she had a woman's instincts, she had read,
she had listened to the tales of her aunt, and she knew that what man
most valued in woman she did not possess. Her great position and the
graces she hoped to cultivate might gratify her ambitions in a measure,
but they would not companion her soul. Books were left; but books are
too heterogeneous an interest to furnish a vital one in life, a reason
for being alive. She had read of the jealous absorption of art, of the
intense exclusive love with which it inspired its votaries. She had read
of the joys of creation, and her whole being had responded; she felt
that did her brain obey her will and shape itself to achievement, she
too would know ecstasy and ask nothing more of life.

Her nerves settled, and she began to write. Her reading had been
confined to the classics of the old world: not only had she not read a