“Your love affairs?”
“Bueno!” Looking him straight in the eye, she accepted the correction. “My love affairs.”
“It will not be necessary.”
Instead of the violent outburst she expected he stood looking at her, in his eyes a peculiar light half of pity, half vindictive. A trifle nonplussed, she returned his gaze. Perhaps, with feminine inconsistency, she was not altogether pleased by his tame acceptance, for her color rose and one small foot tapped the polished floor tiles. “I am glad you take it so reasonably.”
Again he failed with the expected outburst, and her uneasiness grew in correspondence with the pity in his glance. “You mistake me. I said it would be unnecessary. Read!”
He turned and went out, a mercy she appreciated when, after a puzzled glance at the paper he had stolen from Peters, her eye was guided by the heavy ink scorings to the article that set forth Seyd’s divorce. At first she hardly realized its import. But when she did—surely the hand that guided the pen had achieved revenge far beyond its owner’s blackest hope! Going out, Sebastien heard the paper crackle. Looking back, he saw her standing frozen, eyes wide and black in her mute white face; and, stricken with sudden pity, he softly closed the door.
But he did not go away. He knew her too well. Given her wild Irish blood plus her Spanish pride there could come but one result, and while she struggled toward it within he paced the corredor without. When at last she opened the door and came on him there he knew that he had won by the scorn that set her soft mouth in straight red lines. In the dusk of the corredor her face loomed, pale and drawn, the eyes red and swollen. But when she saw the deep pity in his stern eyes her own lost something of their hardness.
“You were always kind—and wise.” Her mouth quivering, she gave him both hands. “ ’Twould have made for my good had I listened to you more.”
For him it was a perilous moment. The touch of her hands aroused an intense desire to seize and comfort her with kisses. Had he given way to it she would have surely been shocked out of the resolution that had been born of her anger and shame. But the habit of years enabled him to keep the impulse under restraint. She went quietly to the end.
“I am very grateful—I would like to make some return. If we had not grown up together I should no doubt have loved you from the beginning in the way you wished, for you are closer to the man of my girlish dreams than any other I have ever known.” She smiled wanly. “He does not exist, my dream man, or, if he did, what use could he have for such a wild, naughty girl as I? So, if you still want me—”
“Want you!” He would have drawn her to him, but she pulled back.
“Not yet! I like you, have always loved you—in a sisterly way. I must have time to change my viewpoint. Give me a month?”
“And then—”
“If you still wish it I will be your wife.”
XIX
As before said, the last piece of machinery and the first rain arrived simultaneously at Santa Gertrudis. The break in the summer heat came with a south wind which herded mountainous vapors in from the warm Pacific. All night the rain fell in sheets that set the thirsty arroyos running bank-high and raised the river ten feet. Then, after the pleasant tropical fashion, the downpour ceased, and day broke with a blaze of sunlight over the Barranca.
“Sinbad’s valley of diamonds!”
It was Billy’s metaphor when he came out with Seyd from breakfast, and, trite as the comparison might be, nothing else could better describe the millions of wet jewels that flashed in the dark mantle of pine above and embroidered the green cloak of the jungle beneath. Yesterday had seen the last touches put on the aerial cable which would be soon dropping buckets of ore into the red jaws of the furnace two thousand feet below. From the edge of the plateau it ran, a streak of silver fringed with glittering rain drops, down and out to the smelter; and when, in the pride of his heart, Billy loosed the brakes the first vibration threw off a cloud of prismatic spray.
“Balanced to a hair! You see, the weight of one full bucket is sufficient to start the chain.”
“Fine!” Seyd echoed. “Runs like a clock. Another week and we’ll be running steady.”
Standing there, watching the buckets sail up and down like great iron birds, they gave themselves up to the joy of accomplishment; as once before, permitted fancy to run amuck through the golden future. And after their hard labors and prolonged anxieties a little self-congratulation was quite in order. If, one way or another, they succeeded in meeting their first note they really could be counted in splendid shape, for their shipments of copper matte would be on the market before the second fell due.
Billy nodded assent when Seyd spoke. “Francesca said they would be home today. I think I’ll run down there and tackle Don Luis.”
Between them were no secrets, and when Seyd rode away an hour later with Caliban at his heels Billy called after him: “And say, old man, have it out with the girl. If she has half the brains I have always allowed her she’ll easily see the accidental way in which it all came about.”
Though the advice merely restated his own intention, Seyd found it inspiring. Riding down the Barranca staircases, he whistled and sang. While following the trail through the long succession of ranchos, jungle, hamlets, he lived over again that first ride with Francesca. Very plainly he now perceived that it dated his love, that
