“You know him! How? when?”
“Do I not see him every day? Is he not my comrade?”
“Your comrade!”
“The lord Hualpa! He came to you once with a message from the ’tzin.”
To a woman, the most interesting stories are those that have to do with the gentle passion. Seeing his mistake, she encouraged it.
“Yes, I remember him. He is both brave and handsome.”
Io’ left the vase, and came to her side. His curiosity was piqued.
“How came you to know he was her lover? He would hardly confess it to me.”
“Yet he did tell you?” she answered, evasively.
“Yes. One day, tired of practising with our slings, we lay down in the shade of a ceiba-tree. We talked about what I should do when I became a man. I should be a warrior, and command armies, and conquer Tlascala; he should be a warrior also, and in my command. That should not be, I told him, as he would always be the most skilful. He laughed, but not as merrily as I have heard him. Then he said, ‘There are many things you will have learned by that time; such as what rank is, and especially what it is to be of the king’s blood.’ I asked him why he spoke so. He said he would tell me some day, but not then. And I thought of the time we went to meet you at the chinampa, and of how he gave you a vase from the ’tzin, and one to Nenetzin from himself. Then I thought I understood him, but insisted on his telling. He put me off; at last he said he was a foolish fellow, and in his lonely haunts in Tihuanco had acquired a habit of dreaming, which was not broken as he would like. He had first seen Nenetzin at the Quetzal’ combat, and thought her handsomer than any one he had ever met. The day on the lake he ventured to speak to her; she smiled, and took his gift; and since that he had not been strong enough to quit thinking about her. It was great folly, he said. ‘Why so?’ I asked him. He hid his face in the grass, and answered, ‘I am the son of a merchant; she is of the king’s blood, and would mock me.’ ‘But,’ said I, ‘you are now noble, and owner of a palace.’ He raised his head, and looked at me; had she been there, she would not have mocked him. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘if I could only get her to cease thinking of me as the trader’s son!’ ‘Now you are foolish,’ I told him. ‘Did you not win your rank by fighting? Why not fight for’—Nenetzin, I was about to say, but he sprang up and ran off, and it was long before I could get him to speak of her again. The other day, however, he consented to let me try and find out what she thought of him. To-morrow I rejoin him; and if he asks me about her, what can I say?”