Sajipona’s cheek paled; her lips tightened as if to prevent an angry rejoinder.
“Are you not content with him as he is?” persisted Raoul.
“What is that to you?” she asked coldly. Then, no longer disguising her emotion, she went on:
“You don’t understand what is between us. He comes from a world that I have never seen. In the legends of our kings there is one telling of a stranger who suddenly appears from a land of clouds—a land no man knows—who brings with him the power to make my people, as they once were, rulers of their own land. It is an old tale. Believe it or not—who can be sure of these things? Certainly, the stranger has never come—unless it is David.”
“There have been many strangers since that time,” said Raoul cynically. “Your people have disappeared before the Spaniard. They live unknown, forgotten, in a cave in the mountains. Why do you think David is the stranger in the legend?”
She drew herself up scornfully. Her dark beauty, flashing eye, quivering nostril, needed not the emerald diadem of the ancient Chibchas encircling her brow to proclaim her royal lineage.
“We are not so poor, so abandoned, as you seem to think,” she said. “This is all that is left of a mighty kingdom, it is true—a cave unknown to the rest of the world. But here we are, at least, free. We live the life of our fathers. Our old men have taught us wisdom that is unknown to you. We have wealth—not only the wealth that you are seeking—but secrets of earth and air you have never dreamed of.”
“This may be—I believe it is—all true. But—what is David to do here?” murmured Una.
“If he is the Stranger of the old legend, the Gilded Man we have awaited, this Land of the Condor is his.”
“You are its queen.”