"Oh yes," said Lopez, "I can do that easily enough. I could let him out, so that he could escape."
At this Katie fell on her knees, and clasped the hands of Lopez.
"Oh, Captain Lopez, I kneel to you! I pray to you! On my knees I pray for his life! Let him fly! Oh, let him fly! Oh, I pray—I pray on my knees!"
Lopez drew a long breath. This scene was terrible to him in many ways; but, above all, it was terrible to see what love was thus lavished on this comparative stranger, when he would risk his life, and had risked his life, for a single smile.
"Think," said he, "what it is that you ask. The moment I let him go, that moment I myself am a criminal, I myself am condemned. I must fly—I must become a ruined man! Ruined? Worse: dishonored, disgraced in my native land; I who have had high ambitions, and have won no mean distinctions. And yet do you ask this of me?"
Katie bowed her head down; she kissed his hands, and in tremulous tones said,
"Oh, I must—I must! I do!"
Lopez was trembling from head to foot. He himself could now scarcely speak from agitation.
"And may I," he said, in a low voice—"may I—ask—nothing from you—when I give up—honor, life, hope, all—for your sake?"
There was a suggestiveness in this question which flashed at once in all its fullest meaning into Katie's mind. She dropped his hands; she sank upon the floor; she bowed her head tremblingly and despairingly. Lopez looked at her with an agitation equal to her own, and a despair only less. She loved another—she could never love him; she loved another—oh, how vehemently, how dearly she loved him! Yet she must be his!