"But I don't talk with my hands," she added with a wan smile in the silence that fell.
Just as he was about to speak, she hushed him, and both listened to a crackling and rustling from the underbrush that advertised the passage of humans.
"Listen," she whispered hurriedly, laying her hand suddenly on his arm, as if pleading. "I shall be finally Anglo-Saxon, and for the last time, when I tell you what I am going to tell you. Afterward, and for always, I shall be the baffling, fluttering, female Spaniard you have chosen for my description. Listen: I love Henry, it is true, very true. I love you more, much more. I shall marry Henry… because I love him and am pledged to him. Yet always shall I love you more."
Before he could protest, the old Maya priest and his peon son emerged from the underbrush close upon them. Scarcely noticing their presence, the pries,t went down on his knees, exclaiming, in Spanish:
"For the first Cirne have my eyes beheld the eyes of Chia."
He ran the knots of the sacred tassel and began a prayer in Maya, which, could they have understood, ran as follows:
"O immortal Chia, great spouse of the divine Hzatzl who created all things out of nothingness! O immortal spouse of Hzatzl, thyself the mother of the corn, the divinity of the heart of the husked grain, goddess of the rain and the fructifying sun-rays, nourisher of all the grains and roots and fruits for the sustenance of man! O glorious Chia, whose mouth ever commands the ear of Hzatzl, to thee humbly, thy priest, I make my prayer. Be kind to me, and forgiving. From thy mouth let issue forth the golden key that opens the ear of Hzatzl. Let thy faithful priest gain to Hzatzl's treasure Not for himself, Divinity, but for the sake of his son whom the Gringo saved. Thy children, the Mayas, pass. There is no need for them of the treasure. I am thy last priest. With me passes all understanding of thee and of thy great spouse, whose name I breathe only with my forehead on the stones. Hear me, O Chia, hear me! My head is on the stones before thee!"
For all of five minutes the old Maya lay prone, quivering and jerking as if in a catalepsy, while Leoncia and Francis looked curiously on, themselves half — swept by the unmistakable solemnity of the old man's prayer, non-understandable though it was.
Without waiting for Henry, Francis entered the cave a second time. With Leoncia beside him, he felt quite like a guide as he showed the old priest over the place. The latter, ever reading the knots and mumbling, followed behind, while the peon was left on guard outside. In the avenue of mummies the priest halted reverently not so much for the mummies as for the sacred tassel.
"It is so written," he announced, holding out a particular string of knots. "These men were evil, and robbers. Their doom here is to wait forever outside the inner room of Maya mystery."