Ibarra tried gently to release himself.
“I did not come to call you to account; I came to bring you peace.”
“I want none of the peace you bring me. I shall find peace for myself. You scorn me and your scorn will make even death bitter.”
He saw despair in her poor, young face, and asked what she wished.
“I wish you to believe that I have always loved you.”
He smiled bitterly.
“Ah! you doubt me! you doubt your childhood’s friend, who has never hidden a single thought from you! When you know my history, the sad story that was told me in my illness, you will pity me; you will no longer wear that smile. Why did they not let me die in the hands of my ignorant doctor! You and I should both have been happier!”
She stopped a moment, then went on:
“You force me to this, by your doubts; may my mother forgive me! In one of the most painful of my nights of suffering, a man revealed to me the name of my real father. If he had not been my father, this man said, he might have pardoned the injury you had done him.”
Crisóstomo looked at Maria in amazement.