Stein was taken by surprise at this brusque remark of Mariquita, and above all at the decision and impassibility with which she had enunciated it. Soon he smiled at Marisalada, and said to her—
“And then you will marry me, beautiful child of nature?”
“Why not?”
“Mariquita, she who accepts a man for a husband, and unites herself to him to pass her life, or, the better to express it, to make of two existences one only, as in a torch two lights blended make but one flame, such a person, I say, accords to this man a greater favor than she who accepts him for a lover.”
“And of what use,” replied the young girl with a mixture of innocence and indifference, “of what use are the guitarists, who sing badly and play badly, if not to frighten away the cats?”
They had arrived at the beach, and Stein begged Mariquita to sit beside him on a rock. On the part of both there was a long silence. Stein was profoundly agitated. The young girl with stoical indifference had taken a stick, and traced figures on the sand.
“How nature speaks in the heart of a man!” at last exclaimed Stein. “What sympathy reigns in all that God has created! A pure life is like a serene day; a life of unloosed passions resembles a tempestuous day. See those sombre clouds which slowly approach to interpose between the earth and the sun, they are such as should interpose between a heart and an illicit love, and let fall on the heart their cold but pure emanations. Happy the land on which they fall not! But our felicity will be unalterable like the sky in May, because you will always love me. Is it not so, Mariquita?”
This girl, whose rude and untutored soul comprehended neither the poetry nor the elevated sentiments of Stein, did not care to answer; but as she could not withdraw herself from this obligation, she wrote upon the sand the word siempre (always) with the stick which distracted her idleness.
Stein, whose emotion increased, mistook ennui for modesty.
“Look,” pursued he, “look at the sea! Listen to the murmur of the waves, murmurs so full of charms and of terrors! ’Tis said they confine grave secrets in an unknown language. The waves, Mariquita, are those dangerous and perfidious sirens, personified by the flowery and fantastic imagination of the Greeks; creatures of a rare beauty, but without hearts, as seductive as terrible, and whose sweet voices attract men to their perdition. But thy sweet voice, Mariquita, seduces not to deceive; you attract like the siren, you will not be perfidious like her. Is it not true, Mariquita, you will never be ungrateful?”