"It is useless to argue with you. Are you going to let that girl alone?"
"She is the only girl in the Californias whom I shall not let alone."
I could have shaken him. "To what end? And her brother? I have often wondered which would rule you in a crisis, your head or your passions."
"It would depend upon the crisis. I am afraid you are right,—that altiloquent Reinaldo will give trouble."
"Is it true that he has been conspiring with Carillo, and that an extraordinary and secret session of the Departmental Junta has been called?"
He looked down upon me with his grimmest smile. "You curious little woman! You must not put your white fingers into the Departmental pie. If you had been a man, with as good a brain as you have for a woman, you would have been an ornament to our politics. But as it is—pardon me—the better for our balancing country the less you have to do with it."
I could feel my eyes snap. "You respect no woman's mind," I said, savagely; "nothing but the woman in her. But I will not quarrel with you. Tell that baby over there to come and waltz with me."
At dawn, as we entered our room, I seized Chonita by the shoulders and shook her. "What did you mean by such a performance?" I demanded. "It was unprecedented!"
She threw back her head and laughed. "I could not help it," she said. "First I felt an irresistible desire to show Monterey that I dared do anything I chose. And then I have a wild something in me which has often threatened to break loose before; and to-night it did. It was that man. He made me."
"Ay, Dios!" I thought, "it has begun already."