“Sweetheart comrade,” he said without proper prelude or preparation––“There is not anything in this weary world worth living for but Love, and Love alone. Shall we take the homeward journey and go where we can guard it?”
“There are tears in your eyes,” said his “Doña Bradamante,”––“and you look as if you make love to me, yet think of some other thing!”
“I have seen a man live through hell this day,” he answered. “Never ask me, Sweetheart––what the hell was. It is beyond belief that a man could live it, and continue to live after it.”
CHAPTER XXIV
THE BLUEBIRD’S CALL
Even in the long after years in stately Christian Spain, Don Ruy was a silent man when his serene lady in stiff brocades and jewelled shoes would mock at court pageantry and sigh for the reckless days when she had worn the trappings of a page and followed his steps into the north land of barbaric mysteries.
Mystery much of it had remained for her! The life of the final days in the terraced village by the great river had been masked and cloaked for her. Ysobel and José had been silent guards, and Don Ruy could not be cajoled into speech!
But there had been a morning he suddenly became a very compelling commander for all of them; and his will was that the cavalcade head for the south and Mexico as quickly as might be, and that Padre Vicente de Bernaldez separate from them all and seek converts where he would. A horse and food was allowed to him, but no other thing.