Don Abrahan sat in meditation a little while, his beard bent upon his breast. When he looked up presently there was that reflection of inner laughter in his eyes.
"The devil first tempted woman under a tree," he said. "If Adam had killed the evil in Eden, it would have been for the happiness of mankind."
Roberto sprang to his feet, his nostrils twitching, his face white.
"I know where to find him!" he said. "This country could not hide a man four days without a strong friend to cover him. Give me permission to go and demand him at her door."
"Without absolute knowledge that he is there, it would be an affront that Helena never would forgive," Don Abrahan returned in politic softness.
"Forgive! Helena forgive! I swear to you, Don Abrahan my father, that I will not have her, polluted by his kiss."
"This is folly," Don Abrahan reproved him coldly. "What is a kiss more or less, if he kissed her? The sailor never met her alone, never spoke a word to her. But I give him to you. Do with him what your desire leads you to do—when you find him."
"If we find that she is hiding him, will that be proof enough for you of her guilt?"
"It is preposterous. She could not hide him, nobody could hide him!" Don Abrahan declared, but contrary to his own deep conviction that somebody, indeed, must be concealing the fugitive. "He has crawled into a cave in the hills; hunger will drive him out tomorrow."
"It is a thing that touches a man's honor." Roberto judged Helena as Helena judged him and his kind, as revealed in her significant speech to Henderson, explaining why she had hidden herself in the tree. Men were not trusted alone with women in the Spanish-Mexican society of that time; they are not trusted in any greater degree in the same society today.