"We are a mixed people—" I began.
"Mongrel!" she thrust at me, with a flash of hauteur.
"Not so ill a name for a race," I replied. "History tells of a people called Iberians. The Ph[oe]nicians and Carthagenians landed on their shores. Then came the Romans; later, the barbaric hordes from the North,—Goths, Vandals, Suevi; later still, the Moors."
The last was too much for her restraint. "Moors!—Moors! Mohammedan slaves!" she exclaimed. "We drove them out—man, woman, and child—before your land was so much as discovered."
"Yet not before they had done what little could be done toward civilizing barbaric Europe, and not before their blood had mingled—"
"Santisima Virgen!" she cried, in a passion which was all the more striking for the restraint that held it in leash—"I, a daughter of such blood!—you say it?"
"I do not say it, señorita," I replied, with such steadiness as I could command under the flashing anger of her glance.
"Then what?" she demanded.
"I spoke of your race in general, señorita. There are self-evident facts. Even were the fact which you so abhor true as to yourself, would your eyes be any the less wondrously glorious? Your dusky hair—"
She burst into a rippling laugh, more musical than the notes of any instrument. "Santa Maria!" she murmured. "You miss few opportunities—for an Anglo-American!"