Early the following morning Ambrosia Lonzello was released from
the convento [12] in which she had been detained the night long,
and staggered into the street. Suffering physically, nervous almost
to prostration, and mentally overwhelmed with horror, she walked,
she scarcely knew where. She felt that she dare not go home--that
father and mother had betrayed her, and that now she was an outcast,
with no friend and with no place on earth. Even heaven had been deaf
to her call, and she felt that the divine Father, too, and the Christ
who had sympathized with Magdalene, cared nothing for her.
It is a wise provision of nature, apparently attesting her sympathy
with suffering, that when sorrow and pain tug almost to the point of
destruction at the heart or body, she provides her own opiate. In
the article of death almost all creatures are at peace, and fear
nothing. Gradually this numbness came over Ambrosia. She apparently
could not realize all that had happened. She ceased to feel the full
burden of her anguish, and became numb, as it were. She no longer
planned, she followed her heart. Indeed, she became more conscious
of the glory of the morning than of her own ruin, and in spite of
her mind's declaration that there was no place in the world for her,
she saw nature beautiful and friendly about her and felt that not
yet had God excluded her.
Her brain would not work, but her heart thought of Saguanaldo and those
whom she had thought to be her friends. It was this thread invisible
that led her to the camp of the Americans. When she arrived she met
first a minor officer and asked to be shown to the commander in charge.
"All right, Miss, just go into the tent and wait until I bring him,"
was the reply to her request.
She entered the tent and seated herself. As she waited a feeling of
drowsiness overpowered her. Finally, scarcely knowing what she did,
she threw herself on the cot in the tent and slept. The soldier who
occupied the tent peeped in and saw her.
"Gee," said he to his messmate, "she don't want the commander now. She
has already made a night of it and needs nothing so bad as sleep."
"Let's wait till she awakens and then keep her to ourselves."
"We ought to have some rent for our tent."
"Sure."
When Ambrosia awakened several hours later one of the soldiers was
at her side and the tent was closed and darkened. She remained in the
tent two days, during which time she was repeatedly assaulted by the
two soldiers. Instead of finding a refuge, she had merely fallen into
another trap. There really is no escape for a creature that is hunted,
especially if that creature be a woman.