“Yes, doesn’t it suit her!” cried Kate to him. “It was made in India for someone as dark as she is. It does suit her.”
“Very pretty!” said Ramón.
He had glanced round the room, at the different attractive things from different parts of the world, and at the cigarette ends in the agate bowl: the rather weary luxury and disorder, and the touch of barrenness, of a woman living her own life.
She did not know what he was thinking. But to herself she thought: This is the man I defended on that roof. This is the man who lay with a hole in his back, naked and unconscious under the lamp. He didn’t look like a Sultan then.
Teresa must have divined something of her thought, for she said, looking at Ramón:
“Señora! But for you Ramón would have been killed. Always I think of it.”
“Don’t think of it,” said Kate. “Something else would have happened. Anyhow it wasn’t I, it was destiny.”
“Ah, but you were the destiny!” said Teresa.
“Now there is a hostess, won’t you come and stay some time at Jamiltepec?” said Ramón.
“Oh, do! Do come!” cried Teresa.