“To tell him the things you have told me to-night.”
“All?”
“Yes.”
His face clouded with dissatisfaction.
“Yes,” she continued, calmly; “that, as becomes a king, he may choose which shall live,—himself or Anahuac.”
So she answered the ’tzin’s appeal, and the answer was from her heart; and, seeing of what heroism she dreamed, his dark eyes glowed with admiration. Yet his reply was full of hopelessness.
“I give you honor, Tula,—I give you honor for the thought; but forgive me if I think you beguiled by your love. There was a time when he was capable of what you have imagined. Alas! he is changed; he will never choose,—never!”
She looked at him reproachfully, and said, with a sad smile, “Such changes are not always of years. Who is he that to-night, only to-night, driven by a faltering of the will, which in the king, my father, is called weakness, brought himself prayerfully to a woman’s feet, and begged her to divide with him a burden imposed upon his conscience by a decree of the gods? Who is he, indeed? Study yourself, O ’tzin, and commiserate him, and bethink you, if he choose not, it will be yours to choose for him. His duty will then become yours, to be done without remorse, and—”
She hesitated, and held out her hand, as if to say, “And I can love you still.”
He caught the meaning of the action, and went to her, and kissed her forehead tenderly, and said,—