The girl asked him for her brother, only to be put off by one excuse or another, and then to hear from him the most loathsome talk of his admiration, not to say his passion, for her. They were nearly alone by this time, and he led her unresisting, as he thought, into another smaller room, brilliantly lighted, and, as she saw in a glance, gaudily furnished, with wine and fruit and cake on a side-table,--a room where they would be quite alone. She walked simply across and looked at herself in the great mirror. Then she made some foolish little speech about her hair, and how pale she looked. Then she crossed to the sofa, and sat upon it with as tired an air as he might have expected of one who had lived through such a day. Then she looked up at him, and even smiled upon him, she said, and asked him if he would not ask them for some cold water. The fellow turned into the passage-way, well pleased with her submission, and in the same instant the girl was at the window as if she had flown across the room. Fool! The window was made fast, not by any moving bolt, either. It was nailed down, and it did not give a hair's-breadth to her hand. Little cared she for that. She sat on the window-seat, which was broad enough to hold her; she braced her feet against the foot of the bedstead, which stood just near enough to her; she turned enough to bring her shoulder against the window-sash, and then with her whole force she heaved herself against the sash, and the entire window, of course, gave way. The girl caught herself upon the blind, which swung open before her. She pulled herself free from the sill and window-seat, and dropped fearless into the street. The fall was not long. She lighted on her feet, and ran as only fear could teach her to run. Where to, she knew not; but she thought she turned a corner before she heard any voices from behind. Still she ran. And it was when she came to the corner of the next street that she heard for the first time the screams of pursuers. She turned again, like a poor hunted hare as she was. But what was her running to theirs? She was passing our long fence in Fernando Street, and then for the first time she screamed for help. It was that scream which waked me. She saw the steeple of the church. She had a dim feeling that a church would be an asylum. So was it that she ran up our alley, to find that she was in a trap there. And then it was that she fell against my door, that she cried twice, "Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" and that the good God who had heard her sent me to draw her in. We had to learn her language, in a fashion, and she to learn ours, before we understood her story in this way. But at the very first my mother made out that the girl had fled from savages who meant worse than death for her. So she understood why she was so frightened at every sound, and why at first she was afraid to stay with us, yet more afraid to go.