It was now plain to Josè that Rosendo distrusted him. But it mattered little to the priest, beyond the fact that he had no wish to offend any one. What interest had he in boorish Simití, or Guamocó? The place was become his tomb--he had entered it to die. The child--the girl! Ah, yes, she had touched a strange chord within him; and for a time he had seemed to live again. But as the day waned, and pitiless heat and deadly silence brooded over the decayed town, his starving soul sank again into its former depression, and revived hope and interest died within him. The implacable heat burned through the noon hour; the dusty streets were like the floor of a stone oven; the shale beds upon which the old town rested sent up fiery, quivering waves; the houses seethed; earth and sky were ablaze. How long could he endure it? And the terrible _ennui_, the isolation, the utter lack of every trace of culture, of the varied interests that feed the educated, trained mind and minister to its comfort and growth--could he support it patiently while awaiting the end? Would he go mad before the final release came? He did not fear death; but he was horror-stricken at the thought of madness! Of losing that rational sense of the Ego which constituted his normal individuality! Rosendo advised him to retire for the midday _siesta_. Through the seemingly interminable afternoon he lay upon his hard bed with his brain afire, while the events of his warped life moved before him in spectral review. The week which had passed since he left Cartagena seemed an age. When he might hope to receive word from the outside world, he could not imagine. His isolation was now complete. Even should letters succeed in reaching Simití for him, they must first pass through the hands of the Alcalde. And what did the Alcalde know of him? And then, again, what did it matter? He must not lose sight of the fact that his interest in the outside world--nay, his interest in all things had ceased. This was the end. He had yielded, after years of struggle, to pride, fear, doubt. He had bowed before his morbid sense of honor--a perverted sense, he now admitted, but still one which bound him in fetters of steel. His life had been one of grossest inconsistency. He was utterly out of tune with the universe. His incessant clash with the world of people and events had sounded nothing but agonizing discord. And his confusion of thought had become such that, were he asked why he was in Simití, he could scarcely have told. At length he dropped into a feverish sleep.