Nunca (never), wrote Mariquita on the sand. And the rising waves amused themselves in effacing the word the young girl had written, as if they would parody the waves of time, which flowing on efface in the heart what is sworn to endure thereon forever.
“Why does not thy voice reply to me, Mariquita?”
“What would you, Don Frederico? I cannot say to a man that I love him. I am unfeeling and unnatural, Maria says, who, however, does not the less love me. I am, like my father, economical in words.”
“If you were like him, I could desire nothing more, because the good Pedro—I say my father, Mariquita—has a heart the most loving that has ever beaten in the breast of a man; such hearts belong to angels, and to a few chosen men!”
“My father a superior man!” thought Mariquita, repressing with difficulty a mocking laugh. “So be it! so much the better, if he has the air of one.”
“Mariquita,” said Stein in approaching her, “let us offer to God our pure and holy love; let us promise Him to render ourselves acceptable by our fidelity, and by the discharge of those duties which will be imposed on us when this love shall have been consecrated at the divine altar. Now let me embrace you as my wife and companion.”
“No!” cried Mariquita, drawing back suddenly, and knitting her eyebrows. “No person shall touch me.”
“It is well, my pretty fugitive,” answered Stein with sweetness, “I respect all your delicacy, and submit myself to your will. Is it not appropriate to say, with one of our ancient and sublime poets, that the greatest of all felicities is, to ‘obey in loving?’ ”