Name: A Set of Six
Author: Conrad, Joseph

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big eyes looking about, began to chatter suddenly, in a joyous, thin voice. She pointed a tiny finger at the rosy glow of sunrise behind the black shapes of the peaks. And while that child-talk, incomprehensible and sweet to the ear, lasted, those two, the dying man and the kneeling woman, remained silent, looking into each other’s eyes, listening to the frail sound. Then the prattle stopped. The child laid its head against its mother’s breast and was still. “‘It was for you,’ he began. ‘Forgive.’ His voice failed him. Presently I heard a mutter and caught the pitiful words: ‘Not strong enough.’ “She looked at him with an extraordinary intensity. He tried to smile, and in a humble tone, ‘Forgive me,’ he repeated. ‘Leaving you . . .’ “She bent down, dry-eyed and in a steady voice: ‘On all the earth I have loved nothing but you, Gaspar,’ she said. “His head made a movement. His eyes revived. ‘At last!’ he sighed out. Then, anxiously, ‘But is this true . . . is this true?’ “‘As true as that there is no mercy and justice in this world,’ she answered him, passionately. She stooped over his face. He tried to raise his head, but it fell back, and when she kissed his lips he was already dead. His glazed eyes stared at the sky, on which pink clouds floated very high. But I noticed the eyelids of the child, pressed to its mother’s breast, droop and close slowly. She had gone to sleep. “The widow of Gaspar Ruiz, the strong man, allowed me to lead her away without shedding a tear. “For travelling we had arranged for her a sidesaddle very much like a chair, with a board swung beneath to rest her feet on. And the first day she rode without uttering a word, and hardly for one moment turning her eyes away from the little girl, whom she held on her knees. At our first camp I saw her during the night walking about, rocking the child in her arms and gazing down at it by the light of the moon. After we had started on our second day’s march she asked me how soon we should come to the first village of the inhabited country. “I said we should be there about noon. “‘And will there be women there?’ she inquired. “I told her that it was a large village. ‘There will be men and women there, senora,’ I said, ‘whose hearts shall be made glad by the news that all the unrest and war is over now.’

A Set of Six

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