"'Where the foot rests, that is home,' is a saying among my people; a truth, that so far as my experience goes, has never been gainsaid."
In spite of themselves and the fact that they could not wholly comprehend the weight and significance of her words, they were fascinated by her discourse, emphasized and illustrated as it was by the dramatic intensity of her gestures and expression.
"Señorita," said Blanch at last, breaking the silence that ensued, "I believe you are still at heart the savage, or better, the nomad you were when you lived in the wilderness."
"When I lived in the Garden of Eden, in God's world, not man's, is what you mean," she replied.
"Do you never have a desire to return to it?" asked Bessie.
"The old days can never be effaced," answered Chiquita. "My thoughts continually revert to them when, as a little girl, I used to set meat and drink before my father and his guests as they sat in a circle about the fire in the center of his lodge or in our house and smoked the long red clay pipes, or, after the crops were harvested, roamed through the land during the hunting season; sometimes afoot, at other times in canoes or on horseback. There are times when such an insatiable longing for the old life seizes me that I become almost unmanageable. I long to throw myself down in the open—lie close in the embrace of Mother Earth, and breathe the smoke of the camp-fire. My unrest is like that of the birds when the spell of the spring and the autumn comes upon them and the migratory instinct seizes them, or like that of the great herds of reindeer in the North which travel each year to the sea to drink of its salty waters, and which, if prevented, die."
"Do you know," said Bessie to Blanch a little later, when they were alone in their room, "she's fascinating when she talks like that."
"Ah! that's just where the danger lies," answered Blanch. "Think of what might happen if she starts talking like that to Jack—it's just what he's waiting to hear."
XX
Juan must have fallen asleep. As he lay stretched upon the bench, he was awakened suddenly by the sound of vehement, passionate words.