Odalite raised her pale and tearful face from his shoulder and looked at him.
“I think I understand now, my dear; and it shall all come right yet.”
She sorrowfully shook her head.
“Oh, yes; it shall come right. Confess now, Odalite. When your boy lover had been gone away so long that you had almost forgotten him, this foreign officer comes along and fascinates you with his splendor, as the rattlesnake fascinates the humming bird, and you were drawn in. Now, however, that I have come back, the old-time love has revived, and you are sorry that you mistook your heart and engaged yourself to this brilliant stranger. Is it not so? Tell me, Odalite. If it is so—as I feel sure it must be—then I will put in my prior claim and stop the marriage, send the interloping foreigner back to his own country, and you and I will marry and go to housekeeping at Greenbushes, according to our lifelong engagement. That is, if the old love has revived, as of course it has,” he concluded, looking eagerly in her face.
She did not answer him. She could not.
Was the old, true love revived, indeed?
No! for the sweet, sacred love of childhood had never died, never failed, but burned now a pure fire that wasted her life.
Was she sorry that she had engaged herself to that man?
So sorry, at least, stern necessity had compelled her to do so, that now death would have been a welcome release.
But she could not tell Leonidas this.