It was one of these nights when the heat weighs upon you like the tomb. The blinds were all raised, and strange, incongruous insects flopped in and buzzed about the lamp, while outside the beasts of humidity vibrated in endless shrill cry; and rhythming this clamour, to the man watching there, came that low, gentle groaning. And he feared.
You don't understand. He told me, and I also, probably, did not understand. She was a gentle, soft creature, made all for love and sacrifice, and with something childish in her that drew the hearts of men in great tenderness. He was a somewhat gloomy fellow, with great asperities in his character and a flaming will. He craved for sacrifice, and she gave it all to him, and yet with her little baby ways created in him the illusion that _he_ was the protector.
And now, as he sat beneath the oppression of the heated night, by her side, with that continuous, soft plaint in his ears, he began to see, he began to see,--ah, many little things that he should have seen, that he had not seen, that,--yes,--that he had refused to see.
When he would return from his long rides to far barrios after leaving her all day face to face with the poignant loneliness of her life, he was wont to pick up a book and plunge into it for the evening. Several times he had seen tears come to her eyes as he did this, and then, with laughing, false, lying surprise, would ask her what was the matter, at which she smiled and shook her head gently.
There were many other things like that, but, he told me, this was the picture which tortured him in endless repetition that night. He saw himself returning from his barrio-ride; he picked up a book and read, and then tears started in her eyes. At intervals he raised the mosquito-bar and looked at her and spoke to her, a great tenderness in his throat; but she did not answer, merely lay with her head on her left arm, and softly with each breath came the little plaint, patient and submissive, and it tore his heart. Then he sat down again at his vigil, with a great muffled fear a-pound in his breast, and then again he saw the picture:--He came back from his barrio-ride, picked up a book and read, and tears started in her eyes.