“Come!” she summoned imperiously.
Once inside, at the first glance around, Torres knew the room for what it was, her sleeping chamber. But his eyes had little space for such details. Lifting the lid of a heavy chest of ironwood, brass-bound, she motioned him to look in. He obeyed, and saw the amazement of the world. The little maid had spoken true. Like so much shelled corn, the chest was filled with an incalculable treasure of gems——diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, the most precious, the purest and largest of their kinds.
“Thrust in your arms to the shoulders,” she said, “and make sure that these baubles be real and of the adamant of flint, rather than illusions and reflections of unreality dreamed real in a dream. Thus may you make certain report to your very rich friend who is to marry me.”
And Torres, the madness of the ancient drink like fire in his brain, did as he was told.
“These trifles of glass are such an astonishment?” she plagued. “Your eyes are as if they were witnessing great wonders.”
“I never dreamed in all the world there was such a treasure,” he muttered in his drunkenness.
“They are beyond price?”
“They are beyond price.”
“They are beyond the value of valor, and love, and honor?”
“They are beyond all things. They are a madness.”