So forth they fared to the porch, and from the porch to the sentinel rock which rose like a needle from the summit of a neighboring hill. Across the sea of silver they looked to the violet mountains, soft and featureless in the lowered lights of evening, and both of them felt it earth's hour of supreme beauty.
"It is good to live—and to know this," she said at last softly.
"It is good to live and, best of all, to know you," he made answer slowly.
She did not turn from the hills, made no slightest sign that she had heard; but to herself she was saving: "It has come."
While he pleaded his cause passionately, with all the ardor of hot-blooded Spain, the girl heard only with her ears. She was searching her heart for the answer to the question she asked of it:
"Is this the man?"
A month ago she might have found her answer easier; but she felt that in some subtle, intangible way she was not the same girl as the Valencia Valdés she had known then. Something new had come into her life; something that at times exalted her and seemed to make life's currents sweep with more abandon.
She was at a loss to know what it meant; but, though she would not confess it even to herself, she was aware that the American was the stimulating cause. He was her enemy, and she detested him; and, in the same breath with which she would tell herself this, would come that warm beat of exultant blood she had never known till lately.
With all his ardor, Don Manuel never quickened her pulses. She liked him, understood him, appreciated his value. He was certainly very handsome, and, without doubt, a brave, courteous gentleman of her own set with whom she ought to be happy if she loved him. Ah! If she knew what love were.
So, when the torrent of Pesquiera's speech was for the moment dammed, she could only say: