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for years taught a multitude of rich girls with poor minds. Because of her affection for the girl, Sor Maria Escapulario systematically violated the rules of the school, which had been created for the specific purpose of turning students into docile creatures. With Nívea she held conversations that would have horrified the mother superior and spiritual director of the school.
    "When I was your age," said Sor Maria Escapulario, "I had only two choices: marry or enter the convent."
    "Why did you choose the second, Mother?"
    "Because it gave me more freedom. Christ is a tolerant husband…"
    "Women have a raw deal, Mother. Have children and obey, and that's all," sighed Nívea.
    "It doesn't have to be like that. You can change things," the nun replied.
    "By myself?"
    "Not by yourself, no. There are other girls like you, with a clear head for thinking. I read in a newspaper that now there are women who are doctors. Imagine."
    "Where?"
    "In England."
    "But that's very far away."
    "That's true, but if they can do it there, someday it can be done in Chile. Don't lose heart, Nívea."
    "My confessor says I think too much and pray too little, Mother."
    "God gave you a brain for you to use; but I warn you that the path of rebellion is strewn with danger and sorrow; it takes a great deal of courage to travel it. It is not too much to ask divine providence to help you a little," Sor Maria Escapulario counseled.
    So firm did Nívea's determination become that she wrote in her diary that she would give up marriage in order to devote herself completely to the struggle for women's suffrage. She was not aware that such a sacrifice would not be necessary, and that she would marry a man for love who would back her up in her political goals.
    Severo boarded the ship with a wronged air so that his relatives would not suspect how happy he was to be leaving Chile—he didn't want them to change the plan—and how ready to get the best possible benefit from this adventure. He told his cousin Nívea goodbye with a stolen kiss, after swearing that he would send her interesting books through a friend, to elude the family's censorship, and that he would write her every week. She had resigned herself to a separation of a year, never suspecting that he planned to stay in the United States as long as possible. He would explain that to Nívea by letter; he decided, he didn't want to make their farewells even more difficult by a announcing those intentions before he left. At any rate, both were too young to marry. He saw her standing on the dock of Valparaiso in her olive-colored dress and bonnet, surrounded by the rest of the family, waving goodbye and forcing herself to smile. "She's not crying and not complaining; that's why I love her and always will," Severo said aloud to the wind, prepared to overcome the whims of his heart and the temptations of the world through pure tenacity. "Most Holy Virgin, bring him back to me safe and sound," Nívea pleaded, biting her lips, weak with love, not remembering for a minute that she had sworn to remain celibate until she fulfilled her duty as a suffragist.
    •
    The young del Valle fingered his grandfather Agustin's letter all the way from Valparaiso to Panama, desperate to open it but not daring to because it had been instilled in him by blood and fire that no gentleman puts an eye on another's letter or a hand on another's money. Finally curiosity was stronger than honor—this was a matter of his destiny, he reasoned—and with his straight razor he cautiously broke the seal, then held the envelope over the steam from a kettle and opened it using a thousand precautions. That was how he discovered that his grandfather's plan included sending him to a North American military school. It was a shame, his grandfather added, that Chile was not at war with some neighboring country so that his grandson could pick up his weapon and become a man, the way he was supposed to. Severo threw that letter into the ocean and wrote