Ramona, by Helen Hunt Jackson

'I do not know. I sometimes think 'Ramona,'' he added faintly; 'but not often. If I think of you by any other name than as my Senorita, it is usually by a name you never heard.'
'What is it?' exclaimed Ramona, wonderingly.
'An Indian word, my dearest one, the name of the bird you are like,—the wood-dove. In the Luiseno tongue that is Majel; that was what I thought my people would have called you, if you had come to dwell among us. It is a beautiful name, Senorita, and is like you.'
Alessandro was still standing. Ramona rose; coming close to him, she laid both her hands on his breast, and her head on her hands, and said: 'Alessandro, I have something to tell you. I am an Indian. I belong to your people.'
Alessandro's silence astonished her. 'You are surprised,' she said. 'I thought you would be glad.'
'The gladness of it came to me long ago, my Senorita,' he said. 'I knew it!'
'How?' cried Ramona. 'And you never told me, Alessandro!'
'How could I?' he replied. 'I dared not. Juan Canito, it was told me.'
'Juan Canito!' said Ramona, musingly. 'How could he have known?' Then in a few rapid words she told Alessandro all that the Senora had told her. 'Is that what Juan Can said?' she asked.
'All except the father's name,' stammered Alessandro.
'Who did he say was my father?' she asked.
Alessandro was silent.
'It matters not,' said Ramona. 'He was wrong. The Senora, of course, knew. He was a friend of hers, and of the Senora Ortegna, to whom he gave me. But I think, Alessandro, I have more of my mother than of my father.'
'Yes, you have, my Senorita,' replied Alessandro, tenderly. 'After I knew it, I then saw what it was in your face had always seemed to me like the faces of my own people.'
'Are you not glad, Alessandro?'
'Yes, my Senorita.'
What more should Ramona say? Suddenly her heart gave way; and without premeditation, without resolve, almost without consciousness of what she was doing, she flung herself on Alessandro's breast, and cried: 'Oh, Alessandro, take me with you! take me with you! I would rather die than have you leave me again!'

XV

ALESSANDRO'S first answer to this cry of Ramona's was a tightening of his arms around her; closer and closer he held her, till it was almost pain; she could hear the throbs of his heart, but he did not speak. Then, letting his arms fall, taking her hand in his, he laid it on his forehead reverently, and said, in a voice which was so husky and trembling she could barely understand his words: 'My Senorita knows that my life is hers. She can ask me to go into the fire or into the sea, and neither the fire nor the sea would frighten me; they would but make me glad for her sake. But I cannot take my Senorita's life to throw it away. She is tender; she would die; she cannot lie on the earth for a bed, and have no food to eat. My Senorita does not know what she says.'
His solemn tone; this third-person designation, as if he were speaking of her, not with her, almost as if he were thinking aloud to God rather than speaking to her, merely calmed and strengthened, did not deter Ramona. 'I am strong; I can work too, Alessandro. You do not know. We can both work. I am not afraid to lie on the earth; and God will give us food,' she said.
'That was what I thought, my Senorita, until now. When I rode away that morning, I had it in my thoughts, as you say, that if you were not afraid, I would not be; and that there would at least always be food, and I could make it that you should never suffer; but, Senorita, the saints are displeased. They do not pray for us any more. It is as my father said, they have forsaken us. These Americans will destroy us all. I do not know but they will presently begin to shoot us and poison us, to get us all out of the country, as they do the rabbits and the gophers; it would not be any worse than what they have done. Would not you rather be dead, Senorita, than be as I am to-day?'
Each word he spoke but intensified Ramona's determination to share his lot. 'Alessandro,' she interrupted, 'there are many men among your people who have wives, are there not?'
'Yes, Senorita!' replied Alessandro, wonderingly.
'Have their wives left them and gone away, now that this trouble has come?'
'No, Senorita.' still more wonderingly; 'how could they?'
'They are going to stay with them, help them to earn money, try to make them happier, are they not?'
'Yes, Senorita.' Alessandro began to see whither these questions tended. It was not unlike the Senora's tactics, the way in which Ramona narrowed in her lines of interrogation.
'Do the women of your people love their husbands very much?'
'Very much, Senorita.' A pause. It was very dark now. Alessandro could not see the hot currents running swift and red over Ramona's face; even her neck changed color as she asked her last question. 'Do you think any one of them loves her husband more than I love you, Alessandro?'
Alessandro's arms were again around her, before the words were done. Were not such words enough to make a dead man live? Almost; but not enough to make such a love as Alessandro's selfish. Alessandro was silent.
'You know there is not one!' said Ramona, impetuously.
'Oh, it is too much!' cried Alessandro, throwing his arms up wildly. Then, drawing her to him again, he said, the words pouring out breathless: 'My Senorita, you take me to the door of heaven, but I dare not go in. I know it would kill you, Senorita, to live the life we must live. Let me go, dearest Senorita; let me go! It had been better if you had never seen me.'
'Do you know what I was going to do, Alessandro, if you had not come?' said Ramona. 'I was going to run away from the Senora's house, all alone, and walk all the way to Santa Barbara, to Father Salvierderra, and ask him to put me in the convent at San Juan Bautista; and that is what I will do now if you leave me!'
'Oh, no, no, Senorita, my Senorita, you will not do that! My beautiful Senorita in the convent! No, no!' cried Alessandro, greatly agitated.
'Yes, if you do not let me come with you, I shall do it. I shall set out to-morrow.'