As if to confirm this supposition, the invalid became less obstinate in her resistance to following the doctors’ prescriptions and began viewing the beneficial effects of the medicines with a skepticism that almost had to be forced.

Idolina made use of the time she spent alone with Teresa to try out, with her help, some movements. The paralyzed limbs were gradually giving up their rigidity. At first the movements were awkward; they began slowly and almost always required the nana’s help to be completed.

When Idolina saw herself standing up for the first time, reflected in the wardrobe mirror, she was frightened. Her body looked very different from the way she experienced it from within. Her height was exaggerated by the long, loose shape of the nightgown. In her face, gnawed by the years of enclosure and suffering, a pair of enormous pale blue eyes, perpetually incandescent with fever, were the only sign of beauty, a tormented and singular beauty.

The day Idolina took her first steps through the bedroom was not the day her will to be healthy finally won out. It was the day she found the formula which reconciled that will with her desire : to use her own body to punish her mother’s conduct. The formula consisted in nothing more than keeping the fact that she could walk a secret.

It wasn’t necessary to tell the nana to be discreet. She understood that the sick girl’s recovery was news that must not get beyond the walls of the room. She had no qualms about keeping quiet because her allegiance was to no one but Idolina. And because she thought that the ashes’ promises needed silence in order! to be fulfilled.

The murmur of the preparations for the dance reached this silence. Idolina refused to believe that the doors of her house, kept shut for so many years by mourning and shame, were now about to open for entertainment. Isabel had to confirm the truth of the rumors. No phrase of excuse, no sign of vexation and even less of disapproval. As if the party were something completely natural, possible and habitual. Everything seemed to indicate, moreover, that it was taking place on Isabel’s initiative.

To eyes not as blinded by abhorrence as Idolina’s, the despair! Isabel was hiding so as not to give her daughter a reason to jeer would have been clearly visible. But Idolina preferred not to express an opinion on the coming event. The crease of haughtiness that always marred her face barely contracted.

The next day, however, a yellow color had flooded across the sick girl’s body, tinging even the sheets that covered her. She couldn’t keep down any food and she refused to allow the doctors’ advice to be followed. With her eyes closed, she heard the pleas of her mother and the weeping of the Indian woman, without responding.