broken she turned quickly, and,
seeing nothing, feeling nothing but instinct, tried to hide herself. A
gate was before her; she would have entered but a voice still more
imperious checked her. While she sought to find whence the voice came,
she felt herself pushed along by the shoulders. She closed her eyes,
took two steps, then her strength left her and she fell.

It was the barracks. In the yard were soldiers, women, pigs, and
chickens. Some of the women were helping the men mend their clothes
or clean their arms, and humming ribald songs.

"Where is the sergeant?" demanded one of the guards angrily. "Has
the alferez been informed?"

A shrug of the shoulders was the sole response; no one would take
any trouble for the poor woman.

Two long hours she stayed there, half mad, crouched in a corner,
her face hidden in her hands, her hair undone. At noon the alferez
arrived. He refused to believe the curate's accusations.

"Bah! monks' tricks!" said he; and ordered that the woman be released
and the affair dropped.

"If he wants to find what he's lost," he added, "let him complain to
the nuncio! That's all I have to say."

Sisa, who could scarcely move, was almost carried out of the
barracks. When she found herself in the street, she set out as fast
as she could for her home, her head bare, her hair loose, her eyes
fixed. The sun, then in the zenith, burned with all his fire: not a
cloud veiled his resplendent disc. The wind just moved the leaves of
the trees; not a bird dared venture from the shade of the branches.

At length Sisa arrived. Troubled, silent, she entered her poor cabin,
ran all about it, went out, came in, went out again. Then she ran
to old Tasio's, knocked at the door. Tasio was not there. The poor
thing went back and commenced to call, "Basilio! Crispin!" standing
still, listening attentively. An echo repeating her calls, the sweet
murmur of water from the river, the music of the reeds stirred by
the breeze, were the sole voices of the solitude. She called anew,
mounted a hill, went down into a ravine; her wandering eyes took a
sinister expression; from time to time sharp lights flashed in them,
then they were obscured, like the sky in a tempest. One might have said
the light of reason, ready to go out, revived and died down in turn.

She went back, and sat down on the mat where they had slept the night
before--she and Basilio--and raised her eyes. Caught in the bamboo
fence on the edge of the