Kate was silent for a time.
“And if he betrays you?” she said.
“Ah, Señora!” said Teresa. “Ramón is not just a lover. He is a brave man, and he doesn’t betray his own blood. And it is his soul that comes home to me.—And I would struggle to my last breath to give him sleep, when he came home to me with his soul, and needed it,” she flashed. Then she added, murmuring to herself: “No, thank God! I have not got a life of my own! I have been able to give it to a man who is more than a man, as they say in their Quetzalcoatl language. And now it needn’t die inside me, like a bird in a cage.—Oh, yes, Señora! If he goes to Sinaloa and the west coast, my soul goes with him and takes part in it all. It does not let him go alone. And he does not forget that he has my soul with him. I know it.—No, Señora! You must not criticise me or pity me.”
“Still!” said Kate. “It still seems to me it would be better for each one to keep her own soul, and be responsible for it.”
“If it were possible!” said Teresa. “But you can no more keep your own soul inside you for yourself, without its dying, than you can keep the seed of your womb. Until a man gives you his seed, the seed of your womb is nothing. And the man’s seed is nothing to him.—And until you give your soul to a man, and he takes it, your soul is nothing to you.—And when a man has taken your whole soul.—Ah, do not talk to me about betraying. A man only betrays because he has been given a part, and not the whole. And a woman only betrays because only the part has been taken from her, and not the whole. That is all about betrayal. I know.—But when the whole is given, and taken, betrayal can’t exist. What I am to Ramón, I am. And what he is to me, he is. I do not care what he does. If he is away from me, he does as he wishes. So long as he will always keep safe what I am to him.”
Kate did not like having to learn lessons from this little waif of a Teresa. Kate was a woman of the world, handsome and experienced. She was accustomed to homage. Other women usually had a slight fear of her, for she was powerful and ruthless in her own way.
Teresa also feared her a little, as a woman of the world. But as an intrinsic woman, not at all. Trenched inside her own fierce and proud little soul, Teresa looked on Kate as on one of those women of the outside world, who make a very splendid show, but who are not so sure of the real secret of womanhood, and the innermost power. All Kate’s handsome, ruthless female power was second-rate to Teresa, compared with her own quiet, deep passion of connection with Ramón.
Yes, Kate was accustomed to looking on other women as inferiors. But the tables were suddenly turned. Even as, in her soul, she knew Ramón to be a greater man than Cipriano, suddenly she had to question herself, whether Teresa was not a greater woman than she.
Teresa! A greater woman than Kate? What a blow! Surely it was impossible!
Yet there it was. Ramón had wanted to marry Teresa, not Kate. And the flame of his marriage with Teresa she saw both in his eyes and in Teresa’s. A flame that was not in Kate’s eyes.