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This place was not dead it was alive terribly alive with memories, voices, a presence unseen yet real. He laid hold of the nearest bush to steady himself, he closed his eyes, only to hear his name spoken louder: "O'Rail-ye!" Johnnie brushed the tears from his lashes.
A cry burst from his throat, a cry that was like a sob, and, kneeling, he gathered the frail, filthy figure into his arms. "ESTEBAN!" he cried. "ESTEBAN! This is O'Reilly. O'Rail-ye! Don't you know me? O'Reilly, your friend, your brother! For God's sake, tell me what they've done to you! Look at me, Esteban! Look at me! LOOK AT ME! Oh, ESTEBAN!"
"You, too, have suffered. How came you to be so poor and hungry, O'Rail-ye?" "I'm not poor, I'm rich. See!" He jingled the coins in his pocket. "That's money; money for you, sweet-heart. It will buy you food and medicine, it will make you well and strong again. Rosa, dear, I have looked for you so long, so long " His voice broke wretchedly and he bowed his head. "I I was afraid "
Then they sat for an hour or two on the bench outside the door, talking about Juan O'Rail-ye and the probable hour of his coming. There were no candles in Asensio's house now, and had there been, neither woman would have dared light one. To hunted creatures darkness is a friend; danger stalks under the sun. When Rosa fretted about her brother, the negress reassured her.
After a time she smiled up into his eyes and her words were scarcely more than a murmur: "God heard my prayers and sent you to me." "Rosa! You are ill, you are weak " Her eyelids fluttered. "I am dying, O'Rail-ye. I only waited to see you." "No, no!" In agony he gathered her once more into his arms. "Oh yes!" Her bloodless fingers touched his face again, then his thin, worn rags.
Senor O'Rail-ye had indeed done well in patronizing it, for it boasted the best cuarto de bano in the whole city a room, moreover, which was devoted exclusively to the purposes of bathing. And it was a large room large enough to accommodate a dozen guests at once.
Dona Isabel gave the name its Spanish pronunciation of "O'Rail-ye." "Juan O'Reilly? O'Reilly? Oh yes! But what has he to offer a woman? He is little more than a clerk." "That is what I tell her. Oh, it hasn't gone far as yet." "Good!" Don Mario rose to leave, for the exertion of his ride had made him thirsty. "You may name your own reward for helping me and I will pay it the day Rosa marries me.
"To be safe, to have you all to myself where I can spoil you, that will be excitement enough." "We'll rent that little apartment I looked at, or one just like it." "But, O'Rail-ye, we're rich." "I I'd forgotten that. Then let's pretend to be poor. Think how our neighbors would talk about that pretty Mrs. O'Reilly on the fourth floor, and her magnificent jewels. They'd swear I was a smuggler."
When the coast-line of Cuba had become a blur astern Rosa crept back and seated herself beside her husband. "I breathe freely for the first time since that day when Don Mario came to offer me marriage," she told him. "The past is beginning to seem like a bad, bad dream and I feel a great hope, a great gladness. I am reborn, O'Rail-ye." "A few hours more and we can all breathe easy."
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