They talked a short time together, and then Antonia walked slowly into the deeper shadows of the wood. She found a wide rock, under trees softly dimpling, pendulous, and tenderly green; and she sat down in the sweet gloom, to think of the beloved dead. She had often longed for some quiet spot, where, alone with God and nature, she could, just for once, give to her sorrow and her love a free expression.
Now the opportunity seemed to be hers. She began to recall her whole acquaintance with Dare--their hours of pleasant study--their sails upon the river--their intercourse by the fireside--the most happy Sundays, when they walked in the house of God together. In those days, what a blessed future was before them! She recalled also the time of hope and anxiety after the storming of the Alamo, and then the last heroic act of his stainless life. She had felt sure that in such a session with her own soul she would find the relief of unrestrained and unchecked weeping. But we cannot kindle when we will either the fire or the sensibility of the soul. She could not weep; tears were far from her. Nay, more, she began to feel as if tears were not needed for one who had found out so beautiful, so unselfish, so divine a road to the grave. Ought she not rather to rejoice that he had been so early called and blest? To be glad for herself, too, that all her life long she could keep the exquisite memory of a love so noble?
In the drift of such thoughts, her white, handsome face grew almost angelic. She sat motionless and let them come to her; as if she were listening to the comforting angels. For God has many ways of saying to the troubled soul: “Be at peace”; and, certainly, Antonia had not anticipated the calmness and resignation which forbid her the tears she had bespoken.
At length, in that sweet melancholy which such a mental condition induces, she rose to return to the camp. A few yards nearer to it she saw Lopez sitting in a reverie as profound as her own had been. He stood up to meet her. The patience, the pathos, the exaltation in her face touched his heart as no words could have done. He said, only: “Senorita, if I knew how to comfort you!”
“I went away to think of the dead, Senor.”