“How grateful I am for your having come! I fairly shook with terror at the thought of spending these hours alone.... I am so frightfully bored here! That is why I begged you when we parted this afternoon not to leave me all alone....”
And she caught up Watson’s hand, and looked at him with a caress in her eyes.
The young man was agreeably flattered by her glances, but at once there arose in his mind a memory of what had happened earlier that day.
“What were those men fighting about? Was it about you?”
She did not answer at once; finally, looking away, she said with a kind of surrender,
“Perhaps, but I despise them both. You are the only man here I care about, Ricardo.”
She laid her hands on his shoulders; and with a feline undulation she brought her face close to his.
“I suspect,” she murmured, “I suspect that we two are going to go beyond the limits of friendship....”
Stimulated by the novelty of being alone with one another, they became conscious of the daring and vehement desire burning hotly within them. In a few short minutes they were going to cover a distance that in his inexperience he thought would have required several long days’ journeys. She, meanwhile, thought of the young Amazon whose riding-whip had almost struck her in the face. Her outraged vanity, and her desire for vengeance, made her decide upon a cynical course of action; she laughed to herself and her laugh was reflected in a cruel glint in her eyes.
“If you’re jealous you ought to have some reason for it,” Elena was thinking. “I’ll pay you back for your whip-blow.”