It was not night yet. The first star glimmered in the western sky, and to the east a soft radiance over San Juan Mountain marked the path where the moon would come. In the warm dusk the woman with the opal fires of Mexico in her heart slipped away from the gay groups and through the stillness of the padres' garden, under the sculptured face and serpent, and then to the place of the altar, where the shadows were always softest. She came swiftly, silently; she had an odd feeling of being followed by his thoughts. The altar was the one place of refuge surely—the altar!
But it was not. He stood there leaning against the pillar. She carried a tiny candle and a rosary. He watched her light other candles in the niche, thus outlining the carved saint with the long hair over her shoulders, and the draperies of crimson. Flowers were there, blood-red roses, and he saw it all in the soft glimmer of the candles; then, as she was about to kneel before them, he strode forward and caught her arm.
The golden rosary fell on the tiled floor between them, and she placed her other hand over his, in mute appeal.
"You shall not kneel at that altar," he commanded, his voice scarcely raised above a whisper; "that much of you belongs to me. I will not go away from you with that memory of you in my mind; I will not!"
She was trembling, and dared not lift her eyes.
"You should not have touched me," she said, brokenly. "All those hours on the hill I did not touch you even once. Must the two of us be weaker than one?"
"Weak? Oh yes, I am weak to-night, or I should not be here—the weakness of a sick man who cannot help himself. It is the last time, Espiritu mia, so long as we live—so long as we live!"
She slipped the Aztec ring from her finger and gave it to him.
"I thought perhaps it was the ring that gave you power over my thoughts," she said, simply; "but it was not. Your heart beats here in my breast, and will till I die, or till you do. Take it back, keep it. After all, it was not the ring!"
Her voice was so low, so even, that he, hearing his own heart-beats at the mere sight of her, felt the sudden resentment of a sick man at what appeared to be her cold control of herself.