"Are you really afraid of death? Oh, you are well off.... To-day the world has in store for you its most seductive smiles ... not a single cloud obscures the heaven of your life. God grant you may never come to desire it!"
"And are you afraid to die? tell me!"
"Sometimes I am, and sometimes I am not."
"At this moment are you?"
"Oh! how funny you are!" exclaimed the young fellow, turning his smiling face towards her. "No, not at this moment, certainly not."
"Why not?"
"Because, if the sea should carry us away, we two should die together; and going in such charming company, what would it matter to me leaving this world?"
The girl looked at him steadily for a moment. Over the young man's lips hovered a gallant but somewhat condescending smile. She abruptly tore herself from him, and turning her back, began to walk up and down on the beach skirting the dominions of the waves.
The steamship was just hiding behind one of the headlands like a fantastic warrior, walking through the water until only the plume of his helmet was visible. When it had disappeared, Ricardo joined his future sister, who seemed not to notice his presence, so absorbed was she in contemplation of the ocean; yet after a moment she suddenly turned around, and said,—
"Do you dare to go with me to the point which extends out there at the right?"