Quesada came back and threw himself astride his horse. "Adelante!" he commanded. The three men and the girl Felicidad filed slowly, on horseback, out of the clearing.
As they proceeded up the shadow-haunted alleys of the barranca, their pace quickened. At a smart trot they were approaching the upper end when, all at once, they were confronted by a girl who lingered beside the way. It was Paquita—Paquita with a pink rhododendron in her blue-black hair.
"You here, Paquita?" Quesada blurted. He was in the lead, and the girl disclosed herself with such surprising suddenness that she seemed a spirit conjured up in a blink of the eye.
"I waited here to say farewell to you, senor caballero of my heart," she replied. He made to push by, but she put her hands on stirrup and leg, yearning close. And panting with eagerness, she cried:
"Take me with you, Don Jacinto! For love of you I will give up wandering and all my other Gypsy ways! We shall have a cabana hidden somewhere in the mountains and secure from the Guardia Civil, and there you will repair to be made blissful by me! Take me with you, or I shall sicken and die, for I love you so ardently that I am consumed by fires within!"
"For shame, girl! I am a Busno—I am of another race!"
She got on tiptoe and clasped her bare arms about his waist and clung tenaciously, passionately.
"Leave me behind then, but first—kiss me! Taste of my lips, they are as sweet as the sweetest! Wrap me in your arms so that I suffocate! Then kill me, if you will! Gladly would I die under your hands—death is better than to be disdained by you!"
Quesada, appalled by the strength and ferocity of her passion, drew away. He felt shame before Felicidad. His face aflame, he cried angrily, "I will have nothing to do with you!" And he started on again.
Very suddenly, then, her whole look changed. The ardent light fled from her eyes; forlornly her hands dropped to her sides; her slim girlish figure drooped and wilted. Most woebegone and piteous was she to see. And her voice a plaintive, fluttering sob, she called after him: