"I told you he had given me a week for my reply."
"And you would marry him—loving another?" The colour that rushed to her cheeks was as much a flush of pain as of surprise. For an instant her burning eyes met mine in indignant protest and repudiation, but they fell before my steady gaze. I think she read the resolve that ruled me now, and feared it.
"You have no right to speak like this to me," she said; but there was neither life nor force in her words, and her voice faltered.
"On the contrary, I have the best of all rights. And you know this." She made an effort to assert herself then. Drawing herself up, she met my gaze steadily, and said in a tone she sought to make indignant:
"What right do you mean?"
For the space of a dozen quickened heart-beats we faced each other thus, and then I said, in a tone that thrilled with the passion in me:
"I love you, and I am the man you love, Sarita, and by the God that made us both, I swear no other man shall call you wife."
The masterfulness of my love conquered her, and with a low cry she broke away, sank into a seat near, and sat trembling, her face hidden in her hands. Love's instinct prompted me then to act, while my passion mastered her. I placed my arms about her, lifted her to her feet, took her hands from her face and kissed her.
"Do you think I will lose you, Sarita, in the very moment our love has spoken." At the touch of my lips she trembled violently, and with a cry of love, she wound her arms round my neck. As her head found love's shelter on my shoulder, my passion burst all control and found expression in a lava of words, hot, burning, incoherent, tumultuous and vehement, poured forth in the delirious madness of the moment of love's triumph.
We were standing there, still passion-locked, when a most unwelcome interruption came. The door was opened, and Colonel Juan Livenza was shown into the room.