Cristoval smiled at her genially. "To burden me, child! I would I might always bear so light a burden as this soft sunshine and thy companionship. No, I've lived through weightier cares and kept my spirits. I was but thinking of the day when it must end."
He was looking away when he concluded, and failed to see the tremor of her fingers as she resumed her task. He was silent for a moment, then continued, with a ring of sadness, "No, Ñusta Rava, I could not weary of this. But it cannot last forever. When I see thee in safety, then I must go. I have thought of a friend whom I may trust to take me back to Panama—whence we sailed for thy shores. Once there," he went on, talking rather to himself than to her, "I can make my way to Spain—for I swear never again to draw sword against the people of this western world. There is no glory in it, and there are wars enough at home where honor may be won as becometh a Christian."
Rava was very still, her head bent over her work, her face colorless and dull. Alas! she thought with sudden heaviness of heart, he is but a Viracocha, and can be naught else. No thought of love but for his sword, no passion but for war. He is like his kind—less men than gods of destruction; gifted with power and wisdom, but cursed with heartlessness. But no! Surely he was not without a heart, for had he not guarded her with a tenderness unvarying and almost womanly? Assuredly not heartless in that sense at least! And there was affection of some nature in every look and intonation. She was conscious of that, for he had never striven to conceal it, and could not have done so from her had he so striven. But, ah me! it must be that his was not a human heart like hers. He was of another world, as her people said—inscrutable, unknowable. She looked up once more, searching his eyes this time with strange inquiry, and quite unconscious of her intentness. The kindliness of Cristoval's face faded into surprise.
"Why, Heaven bless thee, child!" he exclaimed. "What is in thy thoughts? Hast a question thou wouldst ask?"
She looked away, saying with a sigh, "Thou art a Viracocha, Cristoval!" and left him pondering a riddle as insoluble to him as he was to her.
Soon afterward she arose to go. He escorted her to the head of the avenue, and turned slowly back. "I am a Viracocha!" he repeated to himself a dozen times, revolving it in perplexity. "A Viracocha! Now, in the name of a saint, what meaneth she by that? Of course I'm a Viracocha—to her unlettered people; but none, in saying it, ever looked me through and through with eyes as big as if I were a genie out of a bottle in some tale of Araby! A Viracocha, quoth she! Who was this Viracocha? Ha! a heathen god, I've heard; which is to say, a devil! Madre! Meaneth she that I am a devil? No, bless her heart, that is far from it, I'll stake my head! H'm! I'll ask Markumi. No, I'll not! He may give this Viracocha deity a reputation that will make me repent the asking. These pagan gods are oft unsavory, the best of them. 'T is better to be in doubt. But, ay de mi, Cristoval, thou 'rt beyond thy depth in this business with women. It hath more of unexpectedness than a bee-stung colt."
He wandered and pondered for an hour, then gave it up, saddled his horse, and rode off down the valley.
However inscrutable Cristoval was to Rava, or however perplexing she was at times to him, their separate problems did not mar the harmony of the days in the Vale of Xilcala. They were much together, for they had neither occupation nor preoccupation to keep them apart. There were long walks along the lake or among the hills; and visits to the cottagers, to whom their beloved Ñusta came as a gentle spirit of sympathy in their sorrows, or a sharer of their simple joys. There were quiet hours in the garden, often with Maytalca and the daughters of the curaca, Huallampo; but much of the time the Princess and Cristoval were alone, strolling the shaded paths, or sitting in the hemicycle, where Rava busied herself with some dainty fabric while Cristoval watched and mused in the intervals of fitful conversation.
Under these conditions it is less than strange that Rava should wonder, not without disappointment, that the cavalier should turn his thoughts to war and its cruel glory. And it is not more than strange that his thoughts should take this bent with growing infrequency, or that he should look forward with more and more reluctance to the time when his role of guardian must be resigned, and the days in Xilcala be of the past. For, if the difference of race, of age, of culture, combined with the brevity of their association to make difficult to each the real nature of the other, yet the circumstances and the sentiment consequent upon their lately shared dangers were favorable for a live and romantic sympathy. Upon the heart of the girl, indeed, such incidents could have but one effect.
And assuredly, if Rava was disposed to endow her champion with attributes above the human, he was little behind in his exalted estimate of her. He had been bred a soldier, and as such his experience with women had been largely limited to those of the sophisticated type accessible to men of his wandering career. His youth had been passed at the court of the Marques of Cadiz, where he had learned more of intrigue and feminine flexibility than of maidenly traits; and the rigid seclusion of the unmarried daughters of Castilian families of the better classes had inhibited anything more than contemplation of dueña-fended innocence at a distance. He had passed through his callow period of fevers and deliriums engendered by stolen glances from señoritas' eyes; had sighed and sung and thrummed o' nights beneath half-open lattices and dim balconies, not always without catastrophe—once or twice with spilt blood of his own or a rival's, and usually without better reward. But his youth had flown with only uncertain notions of the charms of maidenhood, and he carried these to the wars and forgot them. He had been in love, so he had thought, many times and in many lands; but it was love that had faded to mere memories of names, fondly enough recalled, no doubt, but each dismissed with a sigh for one as deep as for another. And that is to say that he had never been in love.