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And, added Teresa, rich in the wisdom of a myriad songs and stories, they are probably fully aware, ere they shut behind them the door of their home, that some day they, too, will discover that freedom is nought but a lonely wind, howling for the past.

Il n’y a pour l’homme que trois événements: naître, vivre et mourir ... yes, but to realise that, personally, emotionally—to feel as one the three events—three simultaneous things making one thing that is perpetually repeated, three notes in a chord—and the chord Life itself ... an agonising sense of speed ... yes, the old simile of the rushing river that carries one—where? But every life, or group of lives, is deaf to the chord, stands safe on the bank of the river, till a definite significant moment, which, looked back upon, seems to have announced its arrival with an actual noise—a knocking, or a rumbling. To Teresa, it seemed that that moment for them all at Plasencia had been Pepa’s death, two years ago—that had been what had plunged them into the river. Before, all of them (the Doña too) had lived in Eternity. Now, when Teresa awoke in the night, the minutes dripped, one by one, on to the same nerve, till the agony became almost unbearable; and it was the agony of listening to a tale which the narrator cannot gabble fast enough, because you know the end beforehand—yes, something which is at once a ball all tightly rolled up that you hold in your hand and a ball which you are slowly unwinding.