"Salvador, my love! my love!" she screamed. "What have I done? Speak to me, Salvador! It is I, Carmela! Oh, Mary Mother, come to my aid! I have killed him, killed my Salvador!" He looked very white and peaceful as he lay there in the gloom. She could not see whether his lips moved. She was too distraught to note if his heart was beating. It seemed incredible that she, a weak woman, should have crushed the life out of that lithe and active frame with one blow. Then a dark stain appeared on the white skin. Her hands, her lips, were covered with blood. She tasted it. The whole earth reeked of it. It scorched her as with vitriol. She rose and ran blindly. The darkness appalled her. No matter now what fate befell, she must have light, the sound of human voices. . . . And she sobbed piteously as she ran: "Salvador! Oh, God in heaven, my Salvador!" It is not the crime, but the conscience, that scourges erring humanity. Carmela needed some such flogging. It was just as well that her fright at the horrible touch of blood was not balanced by the saner knowledge that a ruptured vein was nature's own remedy for a man jarred into insensibility. Long before Carmela reached the _finca_, San Benavides stirred, groaned, squirmed convulsively, and raised himself on hands and knees. He turned, and sat down, feeling his head. "The spit-fire!" he muttered. "The she-devil! And that other! Would that I could wring _her_ neck!" A sputtering of rifles crackled in the valley. There was a blurred clamor of voices. He looked at the sky, at the black summits of the hills. He stood up, and his inseparable sword clanked on the stony ground. "Ah, well," he growled, "I have done with women. They have had the best of my life. What is left I give to Brazil." So he, too, made for Las Flores, but slowly, for he was quite exhausted, and his limbs were stiff with the rigors of a wild day in the saddle. Carmela went back to a household that paid scant heed to her screaming. Dom Corria was there, bare-headed, his gorgeous uniform sword-slashed and blood-bespattered. General Russo, too, was beating his capacious chest and shouting: "God's bones, let us make a fight of it!"