"Hands off!" thundered Rollo, in fierce anger. "Concha Cabezos, how dare you come hither?"
The boy looked up at the man and answered simply and clearly—
"Rollo, I came because you dared!"
CHAPTER XXXVII
THE DEAD STAND SENTINEL
They walked on for a while in silence, Rollo too much thunderstruck and confounded to speak a word. His whole being was rent with the most opposite feelings. He was certainly angry with Concha. So much was clear to him. It was rash, it was unmaidenly to follow him at such a time and in such a guise. Yet, after all the girl had come. She was risking a terrible death for his sake. Well, what of that? It was right and natural that he should hold his life in his hands. All his life he had loved adventure as men their daily bread—not passionately, but as a necessity of existence.
But this—it was too great for him, too mighty, too surprising. For his sake! Because he dared! All the girls to whom he had made love—ay, even Peggy Ramsay herself, running barefoot in the braes of Falkland—instantly vanished. Life or death became no great matter—almost, as it seemed to him then, the same thing. For here was one who held all the world as well lost for him.
Meanwhile Concha walked silently alongside, the ox-staff still in her hands, but dimly understanding what was passing in his mind. Love to her was exceedingly simple. Her creed contained but two articles, or rather the same truth, brief, pregnant, uncontrovertible, stated in different ways: "If he live, I will live with him! If he die, I will die with him!"
So with her eyes on the oxen and her goad laid gently on this side and that of the meek heads, Concha guided them along the silent streets. Nevertheless, she was keenly aware of Rollo also, and observed him closely. She did not understand what he was doing in the garb of a friar, collecting the dead of the plague on the streets of San Ildefonso. But it did not matter, it was sufficient that he was doing it, and that (thank God!) she had escaped from the beleaguered palace in time to help him. She even reminded him of his duty, without asking a single question as to why he did it—self-abnegation passing wonderful in a woman!