"It makes me sick to hear you talk of love and marriage," she answered. "Your idea of love is solely that of possession. What sort of love could one like you give me in comparison to his?"
"Ah! you do love him! But you will never marry him," he retorted furiously. "If I do not possess you, no one else shall!"
"Ah! you will kill me, perhaps?" she said, divining his thought. "Well, then, be it so! What greater felicity could there be for me than to die in the knowledge that he loves me—perhaps in his arms?" She drew back a pace and placing both hands on her breast, said: "Strike, Don Felipe, when and where the moment pleases you best!"
"Ha! ha! ha!" he laughed. "How could you take me to be so simple, so foolish? Oh, no, Señorita, not until the hour that you have exchanged vows and, intoxicated by love's first kiss, he presses you to his heart, then—then, Señorita, will I lay him dead at your feet in order that you also may realize what it is to live without the one you love," he said with a sneer, a faint smile wreathing his cruel lips as he watched the effect his words had upon her. There was a malicious gleam of exultation in his eyes as he saw her draw herself together suddenly and shudder as though struck by a knife.
"What say you to that, Señorita?" and he laughed in her face.
"What, dead at my feet? Such a one as you come between me and my happiness?" The rich red bronze of her face faded to a livid hue, almost white in its intensity. A strange, terrible light came into her eyes and, as she glided close up to him, he recoiled from her in terror as though from a panther about to spring. Don Felipe had never stood so near to death before. She halted and raised her right hand as if to strike him across the face, then paused and lowered it.
"Don Felipe Ramirez," she hissed in an almost inaudible voice, "if you so much as harm a hair of his head, I'll tear you limb from limb!"
"Bah!" he replied, recovering his equilibrium. "Do you think I fear a woman?"
"Don Felipe," she began slowly, controlling with effort the violent emotions that swept over her, "it is no idle boast if I remind you that no one in Chihuahua shoots better than I do."
"Ha!" he laughed, snapping his fingers. "You think to kill me?"