Ramón sat in his room in the hotel, overlooking the lake, and his two boys sat on the cane settee opposite him.
“What do you want to do, my sons?” said Ramón. “To go back with your Aunt Margarita, and return to school in the United States?”
The boys remained a while in sulky silence.
“Yes!” said Cyprian at last, his brown hair seeming to fluff up with indignation. “That is what our mother wished us to do. So, of course, we shall do it.”
“Very well!” said Ramón quietly. “But remember I am your father, and my door, and my arms, and my heart will always be open to you, when you come.”
The elder boy shuffled with his feet, and muttered, without looking up:
“We cannot come, papa!”
“Why not, child?”
The boy looked up at him with brown eyes as challenging as his own.
“You, papa, you call yourself The Living Quetzalcoatl?”