What of that? A long campaign was before me, loading me in the opposite direction. The chances of being killed, and surviving it, were almost equally balanced in the scale. With such a prospect, when might I stray towards Lagarto?
There was but one answer to this question within my cognisance: whenever I should find the opportunity. With this thought I was forced to console myself.
I stood with my eyes fixed upon the turning of the road, where the overhanging branches of the acacias, with cruel abruptness, shrouded her departing figure from my sight. I watched the grecque bordering upon her petticoat, as the skirt swelled and sank, gradually narrowing towards the trees. I looked higher, and saw the fringed end of the reboso flirted suddenly outward, as if a hand, rather than the breeze, had caused the motion. I looked still higher. The face was hidden under the scarf. I could not see that, but the attitude told me that her head must be turned, and her eyes, “mirando atras!”
Kissing my hand, in answer to this final recognition, was an action instinctive and mechanical.
“I’ve been a fool to permit this parting—perhaps never to see her again!”
This was the reflection that followed. I entered the tent, and flung myself upon the catre lately occupied by the invalid.
A sleepless night, caused by excited passions, succeeding another passed equally without sleep, in which I had toiled, taking those useless howitzers up the steep slopes of El Plan—had rendered me somnolent to an extreme degree; and spite the chagrin of that unsatisfactory separation, I at length gave way to a god resistless as Cupid himself.