"Is it so easy for you, then?" he asked. "Like slipping a ring from your finger or a bracelet from your wrist, and putting it aside to wear no more? Oh, God! If but for one minute you could know aught but the sweet cool love of the girl, or the nun, or the devotee!"
She caught her breath in a little shudder at the heart-call in his words, then put out her hand and looked at him as he had never seen her look.
"Don't touch me," she said, her tones tense with a final decision. "You think that I do not know—that I do not understand; yet you see me kneel there!" and she flung one eloquent hand to the Madalena of the roses. "It is the thought—the thought! That we live on different sides of the world will not change the fact that you live in me, and I in you. And it will be always—always! I do not understand? Yet I have locked my door at night and flung the key through the bars of the window, that I could not follow my heart and go to you wherever you were! I do not understand? Yet there have been days when I feared to mount my horse to ride alone, for fear the wild wish for you would grow stronger than I could bear, and I should ride to you, to you only, and—oh, Mother of God!—ask you to keep me there!"
Her voice broke in shuddering sobs, and she covered her face with her hands, sinking on her knees before the Madalena of the altar, the last crowned saint left in the ruin. Her one hand was still extended to ward him off, but he caught it, held it, and drew her to him.
"You are mine by all that!" he muttered, scarce knowing what he said. "Do you think I shall leave you here after knowing the truth? Espiritu! The Indians named you rightly. Spirit of mine, there are no bonds of earth strong enough to keep me from you now. Come! Our world is together; the nights of the evil dreams have been lived through. Somewhere we shall find the sunshine."
The hand clasping hers she caught to her lips, but when he would have clasped her, she broke from him with a low moan of protest.
"I tell you this that you go away knowing that the real life of me is with you always," she said, and stood leaning against the altar of the saint. "Go now, and go quickly; for I tell you truly, if the day ever come again when I find myself like to follow you, I will come where I am now, and this will end it all."
From the bodice of her gown she drew the little dagger she had taken from the jewel-casket the day before.
"My life is not my own to live in my own way; it is bound by an oath to the dead, and there is no release, none—none! Go now. You know my heart and the madness of it. Forget me if you can,—but oh, beloved, not too quickly!"
