“Yes. Go back to him. You only care about him, and your living Quetzalcoatl and your living Huitzilopochtli.—I am only a woman.”
“No, Malintzi, you are more. You are more than Kate, you are Malintzi.”
“I am not! I am only Kate, and I am only a woman. I mistrust all that other stuff.”
“I am more than just a man, Malintzi.—Don’t you see that?”
“No!” said Kate. “I don’t see it. Why should you be more than just a man?”
“Because I am the living Huitzilopochtli. Didn’t I tell you? You’ve got dust in your mouth to-day, Malintzi.”
He went away, leaving her rocking in anger on her terrace, in love again with her old self, and hostile to the new thing. She was thinking of London and Paris and New York, and all the people there.
“Oh!” she cried to herself, stifling. “For heaven’s sake let me get out of this, and back to simple human people. I loathe the very sound of Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli. I would die rather than be mixed up in it any more. Horrible, really, both Ramón and Cipriano. And they want to put it over me, with their high-flown bunk, and their Malintzi. Malintzi! I am Kate Forrester, really. I am neither Kate Leslie nor Kate Tylor. I am sick of these men putting names over me. I was born Kate Forrester, and I shall die Kate Forrester. I want to go home. Loathsome, really, to be called Malintzi.—I’ve had it put over me.”
CHAP: XXIII. HUITZILOPOCHTLI’S NIGHT.
They had the Huitzilopochtli ceremony at night, in the wide yard in front of the church. The guard of Huitzilopochtli, in sarapes of black, red and yellow stripes, striped like tigers or wasps, stood holding torches of blazing ocote. A tall bonfire was built, but unkindled, in the centre of the yard.