“And you can tell him another thing. He wouldn’t have stopped. He’d have shot. Say that. From me. He’d have shot, because he’s a Spaniard, like you.”
“You lie!” This side issue in some manner set free the girl’s tongue, “I am not Spanish. I care nothing for Spaniards or what they may do. I am Mexican, and I waited to see you kill him. I wanted to watch his blood. But you! you listened to his false talk, and believed him, and let him go. I save his life? Go after him now! Do it with this knife, and tell him it is Lolita’s. But do not sit there and talk any more. I have had enough of men’s talk to-day. Enough, enough, enough!”
Genesmere remained in his chair, while she had risen to her feet. “I suppose,” he said, very slowly, “that folks like you folks can’t understand about love—not about the kind I mean.”
Lolita’s two hands clinched the edge of the table, and she called upon her gods. “Believe it, then! Believe it! And kill me, if that will make you contented. But do not talk any more. Yes, he told me that he loved me. Yes, I kissed him; I have kissed him hundreds of times, always, since before I can remember. And I had been laughing at him to-day, having nothing in my heart but you. All day it had rejoiced me to hear his folly and think of you, and think how little he knew, and how you would come soon. But your folly is worse. Kill me in this house to-night, and I will tell you, dying, that I love you, and that it is you who are the fool.”
She looked at her lover, and seeing his face and eyes she had sought to bring before her in the days that she had waited for him, she rushed to him.
“Lolita!” he whispered. “Lolita!”
But she could only sob as she felt his arms and his lips. And when presently he heard her voice again murmuring brokenly to him in the way that he knew and had said over in his mind and dwelt upon through the desert stages he had ridden, he trembled, and with savage triumph drew her close, and let his doubt and the thoughts that had chilled and changed him sink deep beneath the flood of this present rapture. “My life!” she said. “Toda mi vida! All my life!” Through the open door the air of the cañon blew cool into the little room overheated by the fire and the lamp, and in time they grew aware of the endless rustling of the trees, and went out and stood in the darkness together, until it ceased to be darkness, and their eyes could discern the near and distant shapes of their world. The sky was black and splendid, with four or five planets too bright for lesser stars to show, and the promontories of the keen mountains shone almost as in moonlight. A certain hill down towards the Tinaja and its slate ledge caught Genesmere’s eye, and Lolita felt him shudder, and she wound her arm more tightly about him.
“What is it?” she said.
“Nothing.” He was staring at the hill. “Nothing,” he replied to himself.
“Dreamer, come!” said Lolita, pulling him. “It is cold here in the night—and if you choose to forget, I choose you shall remember.”