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“So be it,” answered Vicente. “Perhaps,” he added, with a short laugh, “you think I have lost my senses. No, no; but my personal loss has quickened my sense of public wrongs. In losing Herlinda, I lost all that held me to the past,—old superstitions, old deceptions. The idle boyish life died then, and up sprang the discontented, far-seeing, turbulent new spirit which spurns old dogmas, breaks old chains, and cries for freedom.”

Vicente had risen to his feet; his face lighted with enthusiasm; his pain was for a moment forgotten. The listening child felt a glow at her heart, though his words were as Greek to her. Doña Feliz thrilled with a purer, more reasonable longing for that liberty which as a child she had heard proclaimed, but which had flitted mockingly above her country, refusing to touch its ground. Her enthusiasm kindled at that of the young man, though his sprung from bitterness. How many enthusiasms own the same origin! Sweetness and content produce no frantic dissatisfactions, no daring aims, no conquering endeavors.