"I'm not sure that I can help it. You see there is a sentry yonder."
Benicia laughed a little. "Pshaw!" she said, "that could be arranged without any great difficulty. One could require, perhaps, two minutes to slip away into the cane, and I think nothing would be discovered until the morning."
"On the contrary, there are several difficulties. For instance, it would probably become evident that the thing had been—arranged. Could I allow you to involve yourself in an affair of that kind?"
"It is by no means certain that I should involve myself. In fact, it is most unlikely," and Benicia laughed again, though she fixed her eyes on him with a curious intentness. "Is it not worth the hazard, Señor, if it set you at liberty to go back to—Las Palmas?"
"No," said Ormsgill with sudden vehemence, while the veins showed swollen on his forehead. "It certainly isn't."
A little gleam of exultation sprang into the girl's eyes, for she recognized the thrill of passion in his voice, and she already knew it was not the woman who awaited him at Las Palmas that he loved. Still, it was, perhaps, fortunate he had answered her in that decisive fashion, for the Latin nature is curiously complex and always a trifle unstable. Though she could not have told exactly why she had led him on, it is just possible that had he shown any eagerness to profit by the suggestion she had made her tenderness would have changed to vindictive anger. That she would be willing to restore him to the other woman at her peril was, after all, rather more than one could reasonably have expected from her. Benicia Figuera was in several respects very human.
"Ah," she said, with a curious slow incisiveness, "then you are not so very anxious to go back—to her?"
Ormsgill sat still for almost a minute with set lips while the perspiration dewed his lined face. He read what the girl thought in her eyes, and his passion came near shaking the resolution he strove to cling to out of him. Ada Ratcliffe, who did not love him, was far away, and this girl who he felt would, as Desmond had said, stand by the man she loved through everything, sat within a yard of him. He seemed to realize that if he flung aside every consideration that restrained him and boldly claimed her she would listen. Her mere physical beauty had also an almost overwhelming effect on him, and the tinge of color in her cheeks and the softness in her eyes was very suggestive. Then with a little strenuous effort he straightened himself.
"After all," he said, "that is scarcely the question?"
"Still," the girl insisted, "I have offered you liberty, and you do not seem to want it. Since that is so, one could almost fancy it would not grieve you very much if you never went back."