DELILAH.
It is rare for an extreme situation, when drawn to its utmost limits, to remain long in a state of tension; hence it is not surprising that Nocobotha, after advancing so far in his confiding love, should recoil terrified at the progress he had made. Man is so constituted that too much happiness embarrasses and alarms him, and it is, perhaps, a foreboding that this happiness will be of short duration. The Indian chief, whose heart overflowed like a brimming cup, felt a vague doubt mingle with his joy and obscure it with a cloud. Still, it is pleasant to flatter one's self, and the young man yielded to this new intoxication and the pleasures of hope. These smiles, these looks, everything reassured him. Why had she come to him through so many dangers? She loves me, he thought, and love intensified the bandage which Doña Concha had fastened over his eyes with so much grace and perfidy.
Men of lofty intellect are nearly all unconsciously affected by a weakness that frequently causes their ruin, the more so because they believe nobody clever enough to cheat them. Had Nocobotha nothing to fear from this girl of fifteen, who avowed her love with such simplicity? But as his mind was, so to speak, turned away from real life to be absorbed in a single dream—the independence of his country—Nocobotha had never essayed to read that enigmatical book called a woman's heart; he was ignorant that a woman, especially an American woman, never forgives an insult offered to her lover, for he is her deity and is inviolable.
The Indian loved for the first time, and this first love, which is so sharp that at a later date all other loves grow pale at the mere remembrance of it, had sunk deeply into his heart. He loved, and the transient doubt which had saddened his thoughts could not struggle against a thought which was now eradicable.
"Can I," Concha asked, "remain in your camp without fear of being insulted, until my father arrives?"
"Command me, madam," the Indian answered, "you have only slaves here."
"This girl, to whom you owe my presence here, will proceed to the Estancia of San Julian."
Nocobotha walked to the curtain of the toldo and clapped his hands twice. Lucaney appeared.
"Let a toldo be prepared for me, I give up to the two paleface women," the chief said in the Aucas tongue. "A band of picked warriors, selected by my brother, will watch over their safety night and day. Woe to the man who fails in respect to them! These women are sacred and free to come and go and receive any visitors they think proper. Have two horses saddled for me and for one of the white women."
Lucaney went out.