O, ghosts, and mediums, and vulgar spirits of air! and stupid tables, mirrors that are flattered with tales of second sight! Why did you not hold a look of hers one moment longer? why did not the roses keep a second longer her lips’ breath for him? Poor fables of visions in the air, that could not draw the image of her eyes to his as he rode up the street scarce a hundred mortal bodies’ breadths away! But they never did; he never saw her, she saw him only as he rode away upon his horse; and so for many--nay, not many (such poor slight power has heaven)--not for many, years. And as his horse bore him away, she came to the tower-window and watched him go--and there she sat weeks, months, until the pennons flashed or the trumpet’s note announced to her, waiting, that he was come again. For he always came in such guise, announced with ceremony. And he did not dream her eyes had been at the tower-window ever since. For their eyes never met. But the people knew, and so they called her “Our Lady of the Tower.” And Nuestra Doña del Torre is she called there still. And thus they lived there alone within that great house, each for pity of the other in courage, each for awe of love in silence; each so loving, so brave, so silent, that the other never knew. XIV. “NUESTRA DOÑA DEL TORRE”--by that title, I fancy, she is known in heaven. For in that city all the good that was worked was hers; after the earthquake, then through siege and civil war, her heart directed her handmaidens, ladies loving her did her soft work. Her own life was but a gentle message. For she never but for the convent left her tower-room. Thither, however, poor old men, children, troubled girls, would come to see her. All this time Bolivar was battling with the might of Spain, and del Torre (del Torre y Luna now he always called himself, liking, at least, to link his name with hers; but she had dropped her own name and called herself del Torre alone--Maria Dolores del Torre) was Bolivar’s captain. Years the war lasted. Once our General was captured in the city; he came to Carácas at a time of war, when it was legal for the Governor to capture him; he had heard some rumor that his wife was ill. He would have been shot but that he escaped from gaol, and this so easily that the prison doors seemed to turn of themselves. No youth, or woman, or child in all Carácas but would have turned a traitor for our lady.