“But you will wait and think of me always.”
“Yes, I will watch the leaves on the river——”
She shuddered.
“No! no! Do not speak of them. Madre de Dios! I hate the river, and I hate the leaves it drags along. I think I hate everything but you.”
The soldier was young, and this was his first experience with hysteria and woman, which combination often disturbs even wiser heads. It disturbed him exceedingly, but he soothed her finally with the wildest vows and many kisses. He kissed a tress of her long hair as he stepped from the casco’s poling platform into his canoe.
For the second time she watched the canoe till it glided into the shadows. Then she shivered violently, chilled to the bone.
A sergeant of a certain regiment of United States volunteers was prowling along the brink of the Pasig, outside the Cuartel Infanteria’s walls, looking for a pet monkey that had disappeared. Something in the long grass caught his eye, and he stopped. He stepped back quickly and hurried around the corner of the wall, returning with four soldiers.
He parted the grass with his arms, and they saw the dead body of a Filipino girl. Her face was concealed by a disordered mass of black hair, and, pinned to her breast by a rudely fashioned knife that was buried to the hilt, was a miniature insurgent flag.
They tenderly bore the body to the pathway, and the hair fell from the face. One of the soldiers let go his hold and tottered to the ground.