"Paquita," he said, not coldly, but without any weakness of pity, "it is because I am strong and absolute that I cannot love you. When your eye caresses me with its look, your tongue with its subtle flattery, my masculinity rebels at the thought of being wooed by a woman; I am revolted, sickened! Fling your soul with the same impetuosity and passion to some Gypsy lad, and he may love you; but I—no, never I!"
She groaned aloud, knowing full well that he spoke a primitive truth. But she could not help yearning toward him, her face bloodless with desire.
Said he, "If you would but flee away from me, or shudder when your glance meets mine, or even treat me with disdain and coldness, perhaps then—who knows? But I must be the predatory one, the seeker, the stalker! Else I cannot love."
He made as if to rise. But before he could get upon his feet, she leaped up and bent above him and kissed him full upon the lips. Then swiftly and blindly she fled.
Once she had gone, Quesada did not bestir himself. He sat gazing morosely into the limpid tarn below his rock.
From a great distance, from away up in the mountains, there dropped down vaguely to his ears the ringing note of a pack of hounds in full cry. Came also, every little while, the bark of rifles remote and far. Quesada gave no heed to these sounds. All through the morning, the mountain airs had wafted through the barranca vagrant notes of this same refrain.
Very suddenly, however, Quesada heard, from much nearer at hand, the voices of men shouting and hallooing. He heard his own name called. The voices drew nearer. The shouting men were in the barranca itself; they were noisily proceeding through the rattling underwood. He heard them on the path above his nook by the pool, still calling his name. He did not lift his voice in reply, nor even turn his head. But suddenly, from the bushes within touch of his hand and right behind his head, a voice spoke out, sharply, peremptorily:
"Aupa, Don Jacinto! There is no time to be lost. Already they are entering the gateway to this barranca!"
Looking over his shoulder, Quesada saw, no more than a yard in the rear and peering through a hole in the bushes, an uncouth disheveled face like the face of a satyr or faun—the Gypsy-eyed, bronzed, and grizzle-bearded face of Pepe Flammenca.
"Of whom do you speak?" asked the bandolero.