Cipriano arrived very pleased, his black eyes shining with the boyish look. He wanted Kate to marry him, go through the Mexican civil marriage, and instal herself in the Villa Aragon. She hesitated. She knew she must go back to Europe, to England and Ireland, very soon. The necessity was imperative. The sense of menace that Mexico put over her, and the feeling of inner nausea, was becoming too much to bear. She felt she could not stand it, unless she went away to relax for a time.
This she told to Cipriano. And his face fell.
“It doesn’t matter to me very much whether I marry or not, before I go,” she said. “But I must go soon—soon.”
“How soon?”
“By January.”
His face lightened again.
“Then marry me before you go,” he said. “Next week.”
She agreed, with curious indifference, and he, his eyes flashing again like a boy’s, moved quickly, to make the necessary legal preparations.
She did not care whether she married or not. In one essential sense, she had married Cipriano already. He was first and foremost a soldier, swift to come to her, and swift to go. She would always be a good deal alone.
And him alone, just as a man and a soldier, she could marry easily enough. It was this terrible Mexico that frightened her with a sense of doom.