Mitla glanced up at her companion doubtfully with her large, full eyes, looking very sorrowful. Friend is a very cold sounding word when applied by a loved one to the one who loves, and thus it sounded to her, coming from Euetzin.
"Yes, it has, thanks to you, my preserver," she answered dispiritedly. She could not forget for a moment, when in his presence, the great service he had rendered her. Thoughts of it seemed to dispossess all else in her mind, and she continually referred to it in their conversations. Her voice, sad and low, attracted Euetzin's notice, and, looking at her, he caught her eyes as they were raised to his seemingly almost ready to weep, and he said concernedly:
"You are not happy; your eyes look too sadly appealing for that. Are you in trouble?"
"My eyes reflect the sadness which is in my heart." She could say no more; and the tears were seen to start, which she tried to conceal, but could not.
"Why, Mitla, you are surely ill! Why do you weep?" the tzin asked solicitously.
"Can you not guess? Is it not enough to sadden my heart to know that you are going away, perhaps never to return?" was her tearful reply.
"Am I, indeed, so much to you that my going should affect you thus?" he asked, not only surprised, but deeply moved by her evident distress.
"You will never know, because you can not realize it, how much you are to her whose honor you preserved inviolate. I will never see you again; it is for this that my heart is filled with sadness and my eyes with tears," she said sorrowfully.
Coming to a little shaded mound they sat down, and the tzin said:
"When I am gone you will soon forget, and only remember me as the friend of Hualcoyotl." Her answer to this was a reproachful look. An expression of pain passed over her countenance, and her eyes suddenly became suffused again with tears. Euetzin saw that her feelings were deeply wounded by his words, and, taking her hand, he hastened to say, repentantly: