been her father and mother; who fought and wrangled over her precocious
little life; abused or caressed her as she sided with either; and then
left her with a circus troupe, where she first tasted the power of her
courage, her beauty, and her recklessness. She remembered those flashes
of triumph that left a fever in her veins--a fever that when it failed
must be stimulated by dissipation, by anything, by everything that
would keep her name a wonder in men's mouths, an envious fear to women.
She recalled her transfer to the strolling players; her cheap
pleasures, and cheaper rivalries and hatred--but always Teresa! the
daring Teresa! the reckless Teresa! audacious as a woman, invincible as
a boy; dancing, flirting, fencing, shooting, swearing, drinking,
smoking, fighting Teresa! "Oh, yes; she had been loved, perhaps--who
knows?--but always feared. Why should she change now? Ha, he should
see."
She had lashed herself in a frenzy, as was her wont, with gestures,
ejaculations, oaths, adjurations, and passionate apostrophes, but with
this strange and unexpected result. Heretofore she had always been
sustained and kept up by an audience of some kind or quality, if only
perhaps a humble companion; there had always been some one she could
fascinate or horrify, and she could read her power mirrored in their
eyes. Even the half-abstracted indifference of her strange host had
been something. But she was alone now. Her words fell on apathetic
solitude; she was acting to viewless space. She rushed to the opening,
dashed the hanging bark aside and leaped to the ground.
She ran forward wildly a few steps, and stopped.
"Hallo!" she cried. "Look, 'tis I, Teresa!"
The profound silence remained unbroken. Her shrillest tones were lost
in an echoless space, even as the smoke of her fire had faded into pure
ether. She stretched out her clenched fists as if to defy the pillared
austerities of the vaults around her.
"Come and take me if you dare!"
The challenge was unheeded. If she had thrown herself violently against
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