“A word which I have discovered is of wide meaning, Leoncia Solano. In New York there are worshippers at certain altars who call all men in the world ‘brothers,’ all women ‘sisters.’”
“His father was my father,” Leoncia explained with patient explicitness. “His mother was my mother. We are full brother and sister.”
“And Francis?” the other queried, convinced, with sudden access of interest. “Are you, too, his sister?”
Leoncia shook her head.
“Then you do love Francis!” the Queen charged, smarting with disappointment.
“You have him,” said Leoncia.
“No; for you have taken him from me.”
Leoncia slowly and sadly shook her head and sadly gazed out over the heat-shimmering surface of Chiriqui Lagoon.
After a long lapse of silence, she said, wearily, “Believe that. Believe anything.”
“I divined it in you from the first,” the Queen cried. “You have a strange power over men. I am a woman not unbeautiful. Since I have been out in the world I have watched the eyes of men looking at me. I know I am not all undesirable. Even have the wretched males of my Lost Valley with downcast eyes looked love at me. One dared more than look, and he died for me, or because of me, and was flung into the whirl of waters to his fate. And yet you, with this woman’s power of yours, strangely exercise it over my Francis so that in my very arms he thinks of you. I know it. I know that even then he thinks of you!”