"I don't know, Manuel."
Confidently he explained away her uncertainty:
"A maiden's love is retiring, shy, like the first flowers of the spring. She doubts it, fears it, hides it, my beloved, like——"
He was just swimming into his vocal stride when she cut him short decisively:
"It isn't that way with me, Manuel. I should tell you if I knew. Tell me what love is, my cousin, and I may find an answer."
He was off again in another lover's rhapsody. This time there was a smile almost of amusement in her eyes as she listened.
"If it is like that, I don't think I love you, Manuel. I don't think poetry about you, and I don't dream about you. Life isn't a desert when you are away, though I like having you here. I don't believe I care for you that way, not if love is what the poets and my cousin Manuel say it is."
Her eyes had been fixed absently now and again on an approaching wagon. It passed on the road below them, and she saw, as she looked down, that her vaquero Pedro lay in the bottom of it upon some hay.
"What is the matter? Are you hurt?" she called down.
The lad who was driving looked up, and flashed a row of white teeth in a smile of reassurance to his mistress.