above the body and yet binding it, touching the soul and growing upon it, but filling the soul itself with fear and unquietness, and making her heart cry out within her as if it were not hers and were pleading to be free.  So, as she could not understand that this was love, which, as she had heard said, made women and men most happy, like gods and goddesses, above their kind, she lay alone in the darkness that was always as day to her, and wept her heart out in scalding tears.

In the corridor outside, Dolores made a few steps, remembering to put out her left hand to touch the wall, as Inez had told her to do; and then she heard what had reached her sister’s ears much sooner.  She stood still an instant, strained her eyes to see in the dim light of the single lamp, saw nothing, and heard the sound coming nearer.  Then she quickly crossed the corridor to the nearest embrasure to hide herself.  To her horror she realized that the light of the full moon was streaming in as bright as day, and that she could not be hid.  Inez knew nothing of moonlight.

She pressed herself to the wall, on the side away from her own door, making herself as small as she could, for it was possible that whoever came by might pass without turning his head.  Nervous and exhausted by all she had felt and been made to feel since the afternoon, she held her breath and waited.

The regular tread of a man booted and spurred came relentlessly towards her, without haste and without pause.  No one who wore spurs but her father ever came that way.  She listened breathlessly to the hollow echoes, and turned her eyes along the wall of the embrasure.  In a moment she must see his gaunt figure, and the moonlight would be white on his short grey beard.

* * * * *

CHAPTER IV

Dolores knew that there was no time to reflect as to what she should do, if her father found her hiding in the embrasure, and yet in those short seconds a hundred possibilities flashed through her disturbed thoughts.  She might slip past him and run for her life down the corridor, or she might draw her hood over her face and try to pretend that she was some one else,—­but he would recognize the hood itself as belonging to Inez,—­or she might turn and lean upon the window-sill, indifferently, as if she had a right to be there, and he might take her for some lady of the court, and pass on.  And yet she could not decide which to attempt, and stood still, pressing herself against the wall of the embrasure, and quite forgetful of the fact that the bright moonlight fell unhindered through all the other windows upon the pavement, whereas she cast a shadow from the one in which she was standing, and that any one coming along the corridor would notice it and stop to see who was there.