Section 12

At last after Doña Clara had seen even the
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PERHAPS AN INTENTION
kitchens, the Abbess said: “Now will you excuse me, for I must go into the room of the very sick and say a few words for them to think about when they cannot sleep. I will not ask you to come with me there, for you are not accustomed to such ... such sounds and things. And besides I only talk to them as one talks to children.” She looked up at her with her modest rueful smile. Suddenly she . disappeared a moment to return with one of her helpers, one who had likewise been involved in the affair of the bridge and who had formerly been an actress. “She is leaving me,” said the Abbess, “for some work across the city and when I have spoken here I must leave you both, for the flour- broker will not wait for me any longer, and our argument will take a long time.”
But Dona Clara stood in the door as the Abbess talked to them, the lamp placed on the floor beside her. Madre Maria stood with her back against a post; the sick lay in rows gazing at the ceiling
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THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY
and trying to hold their breaths. She talked that night of all those out in the dark (she was think- ing of Esteban alone, she was thinking of Pepita alone) who had no one to turn to, for whom the world perhaps was more than difficult, without meaning. And those who lay in their beds there felt that they were within a wall that the Abbess had built for them; within all was light and warmth, and without was the darkness they would not exchange even for a relief from pain and from dying. But even while she was talking, other thoughts were passing in the back of her mind. “Even now,” she thought, “almost no one remem- bers Esteban and Pepita, but myself. Camila alone remembers her Uncle Pio and her son; this woman, her mother. But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and for- gotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made
234
PERHAPS AN INTENTION
them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”
THE END
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