“Ah! Yes! Exactly! Exactly! But how good to be overwhelmed! How splendid if something will overwhelm me! Ah, I am so glad!”
The last word came with a clapping French resonance, and the young man dived for his soup again. He was lean and pale, but burning with an intense, crazy energy.
“You see,” said young Garcia, raising his full, bright dark eyes to Kate, half aggressive and half-bashful: “we must do something for Mexico. If we don’t, it will go under, no? You say you don’t like socialism. I don’t think I do either. But if there is nothing else but socialism, we will have socialism. If there is nothing better. But perhaps there is.”
“Why should Mexico go under?” said Kate. “There are lots of children everywhere.”
“Yes. But the last census of Porfirio Diaz gave seventeen million people in Mexico, and the census of last year gave only thirteen millions. Maybe the count was not quite right. But you count four million people fewer, in twenty years, then in sixty years there will be no Mexicans: only foreigners, who don’t die.”
“Oh, but figures always lie!” said Kate. “Statistics are always misleading.”
“Maybe two and two don’t make four,” said Garcia. “I don’t know if they do. But I know, if you take two away from two, it leaves none.”
“Do you think Mexico might die out?” she said to Don Ramón.
“Why!” he replied. “It might. Die out and become Americanised.”
“I quite see the danger of Americanisation,” said Owen. “That would be ghastly. Almost better die out.”