“Yes, my independence came suddenly to me!” she agreed, “therefore I shall never come again.”
He darkened volcanically. “You must not—do that!” he commanded, in a shaken voice.
He did not attempt to speak again for a moment, but broodingly studied her face as if to find the key to his new behavior. He must have come to realize the unalterable nature of this new purpose, for he said in tones so strangely humble the girl could scarcely recognize them as utterance of his: “If I promise that I will do these things no more, will you stay?”
She shook her head.
“I beg of you to remain!” he insisted in a low voice. “I will ask only that you sit at that window where you have always sat—only that, no more.”
She was startled to perceive that tears of emotion had gathered in his eyes. Suddenly he burst into a torrent of speech, as he paced agitatedly to and fro.
“Do you think then that I have had so much in life?” he demanded turning round fiercely upon her. “Know then that I have been thwarted in all that I ever desired! Fifteen years ago I came to these colonies, penniless, alone. My family had lost everything in Spain. Like many another Spanish youth, I set out with hopes that towered to the skies, for I was young and full of hope. El Dorado would bring me my fortune, I believed, just as you believed it would bring you yours.
“But I found myself a stranger without affiliations in a strange land. My illustrious name counted for nothing in such a country. I was a lawyer, but there were plenty more of my kind who were woven into the network of the Blood, you understand. Shall I tell you how I starved in this land, how my heart ached to breaking because of it! One way of salvation opened to me, the way of most of my desperate countrymen. It was a dark way to me, but it opened the closed gates of the East. I, too, entered this freemasonry of blood. It was smooth traveling after that, but”—he tore ferociously at his immaculate waistcoat—“if the years could be swung back, and I could walk these streets destitute—but free and a youth again—yes, for that. I would toss Satan my soul!”
He put his hand up to his throat. “You came! I used to dream of one like you on that old ship, I, a poor lad on the way to the East to find my fortune: I have tried everything with you, I admit. I was a devil, as you say—but am I not bound in a web whose threads are as strong as the tentacles of the devil fish? This place will turn black as hell after you are gone!”
He paused with hands appealingly outstretched. Another darkened soul! A feeling of pity swept over the girl. She turned upon him a commiserative face.