“What does this girl want now?”
“The cards! our cards!”
“Why, to be sure!” He ran after her, and joy beat in her heart at the fleet kiss he tried for and half missed. She escaped into the room, laughing for delight at her lover’s being himself again—his own right self that she talked with always in the long days she waited alone.
“Take it!” she cried out, putting the guitar at him so he should keep his distance. “There! now you have broken it, songless Americano! You shall buy me another.” She flung the light instrument, that fell in a corner with a loud complaint of all the strings together, collapsing to a blurred hollow humming, and silence.
“Now you have done it!” said Genesmere, mock serious.
“I don’t care. I am glad. He played on that to-day. He can have it, and you shall give me a new one.
“‘Yo soy purita mejicana;
Nada tengo español,’”
sang the excited, breathless Lolita to her American, and seated herself at the table, beginning a brisk shuffle of a dim, dog-eared pack. “You sit there!” She nodded to the opposite side of the table. “Very well, move the lamp then.” Genesmere had moved it because it hid her face from him. “He thinks I cheat! Now, Señor Don Ruz, it shall be for the guitar. Do you hear?”
“Too many pesos, señorita.”
“Oh, oh! the miser!”