“This is an unexpected meeting, Manuela. I had hardly hoped for it, as we set off very early to-morrow; but I’m glad we have met, for I should never have got over the feeling that I had been unkind in going off without saying good-bye. Do you make out what I mean? I think you understand English better than my bad Spanish.”
“Yes—I understan’. I very sorry we part. Very, very sorry. Good-bye.”
She put out her hand, and Lawrence mechanically took it. There was something so ridiculous in this prompt and cool way of parting, after having been so long together, that the youth could scarcely believe he was awake. Had this pretty little Inca princess, then, no feeling whatever—no touch of common tenderness, like other girls? Did the well-known stoicism of her race require that she should part for the last time from the man who had twice saved her life, with a simple “I’m very sorry. Good-bye?”
He felt cured now, completely. Such a spirit, he thought, could not command esteem, much less affection. As neither body nor spirit was now left to him, he began to feel quite easy in his mind—almost desperately easy—and that paternal, fraternal Platonic interest in the child which we have before mentioned began to revive.
“Well, Manuela,” he said at last, with a stupendous sigh, as though he were heaving the entire Andes off his rugged old shoulders, yet with a brotherly smile as he patted the little brown hand, “you and I have had pleasant times together. I could have wished—oh! how I—well, hem! but no matter. You will soon, no doubt be among your own people again. All I would ask of you is sometimes, when far-away, to think of me; to think of me as perhaps, the presumptuous young fellow who did his best to make a long and rather trying journey agreeable to you. Think of me, Manuela, as a father, and I will think of you as my little Indian girl!”
“I will fink,” she said, dropping her grave eyes on the ground, and the stoicism of all the Incas seemed to be concentrated in her look and bearing at that moment, “t’ink of you as a fadder.”
“Good-bye,” he said again.
“Good-bye,” she replied.
He had intended to print a fatherly kiss on the little brown hand, but this parting was too much. He dropped her hand, and, turning abruptly away with a final “Farewell—God bless you,” quickly left the spot, in a sort of bewildered amazement that a heartless Indian girl should ever have been able to obtain, even for a time, so powerful an influence over him.