“That is not my desire. Remember, Daughter, that you were party to this plan, aye, that it sprang from your far-seeing mind. Still, now that your heart has changed, I would not hold you to your bargain, who desire most of all things to see you happy at my side. Choose, therefore, and I obey. On your head be it.”
“What shall I say, O Lord, whom I saved from the sea?” asked Quilla in a piercing whisper, but without turning her head towards me.
Now an agony took hold of me for I knew that what I bade her, that she would say, and that perchance upon my answer hung the fate of all this great Chanca people. If she went they would be saved, if she remained perchance she would be my wife if only for a while. For the Chancas I cared nothing and for the Quichuas I cared nothing, but Quilla was all that remained to me in the world and if she went, it was to another man. I would bid her bide. And yet—and yet if her case were mine and the fate of England hung upon my breath, what then?
“Be swift,” she whispered again.
Then I spoke, or something spoke through me, saying:
“Do what honour bids you, O Daughter of the Moon, for what is love without honour? Perchance both shall still be yours at last.”
“I thank you, Lord, whose heart speaks as my heart,” she whispered for the third time, then lifting her head and looking Huaracha in the eyes, said:
“Father, I go, but that I will wed this Urco I do not promise.”