"With this knowledge of you my own resistless desire for variety left me: my nature concentrated into one paramount wish,--to be all things to you. What I had felt vaguely before and stifled--the nothingness of life, the inevitableness of satiety--I repudiated utterly, now that they were personified in you; I would not recognize the fact of their existence. _I_ could make you happy. How could imagination shape such scenes, such perfection of union, of companionship, if reality were not? Imagination is the child of inherited and living impressions. I might exaggerate; but, even stripped of its halo, the substance must be sweeter and more fulfilling than anything else on this earth at least. And I knew that you loved me. Oh, I had _felt_ that! And the variousness of your nature and desires, although they might madden me at times, would give an extraordinary zest to life. I was The Doomswoman no longer. I was a supplementary being who could meet you in every mood and complete it; who would so understand that I could be man and woman and friend to you. A delusion? But so long as I shall never know, let me believe. An extraordinary tumultuous desire that rose in me like a wave and shook me often at first, had, in those last sad weeks, less part in my musings. It seemed to me that that was the expression, the poignant essence, of love; but there was so much else!

I do not understand that, however, and never shall. But I wanted to tell you all. I could not rest until you knew me as I am and as you had made me. And I will tell you this too," she cried, breaking suddenly, "I wanted you so! Oh, I needed you so! It was not I, only, who could give. And it is so terrible for a woman to stand alone!"

He made no reply for a moment. But he forgot every other interest and scheme and idea stored in his impatient brain. He was thrilled to his soul, and filled with the exultant sense that he was about to take to his heart the woman compounded for him out of his own elements.

"Speak to me," she said.

"My love, I have so much to say to you that it will take all the years we shall spend together to say it in."

"No, no! Do not speak of that. There I am firm. Although the misery of the past months were to be multiplied ten hundred times in the future, I would not marry you."

Estenega, knowing that their hour of destiny was come, and that upon him alone depended its issues, was not the man to hesitate between such happiness as this woman alone could give him, and the gray existence which she in her blindness would have meted to both: his bold will had already taken the future in its relentless grasp. But, knowing the mental habit of women, he thought it best to let Chonita free her mind, that there might be the less in it to protest for hearing while his heart and pa.s.sion spoke to hers.

"It seems absurd to argue the matter," he said, "but tell me the reasons again, if you choose, and we will dispose of them once for all. Do not think for a moment, my darling, that I do not respect your reasons; but I respect them only because they are yours; in themselves they are not worthy of consideration."

"Ay, but they are. It has been an unwritten law for four generations that an Estenega and an Iturbi y Moncada should not marry; the enmity began, as you should know, when a member of each family was an officer in a detachment of troops sent to protect the Missions in their building. And my father--he told me lately--loved your father's sister for many years,--that was the reason he married so late in life,--and would not ask her because of her blood and of cruel wrongs her father had done his. Shall his daughter be weak where he was strong? You cast aside traditions as if they were the seeds of an apple; but remember that they are blood of my blood. And the vow I made,--do you forget that? And the words of it? The Church stands between us. I will tell you all: the priest has forbidden me to marry you; he forbade it every time I confessed; not only because of my vow, but because you had aroused in me a love so terrible that I almost took the life of another woman. Could I bring you back to the Church it might be different; but you rule others; no one could remould you. You see it is hopeless. It is no use to argue."

"I have no intention of arguing. Words are too good to waste on such an absurd proposition that because our fathers hated, we, who are independent and intelligent beings, should not marry when every drop of heart's blood demands its rights. As for your vow,--what is a vow?

Hysterical egotism, nothing more. Were it the promise of man to man, the subject would be worth discussing. But we will settle the matter in our own way." He took her suddenly in his arms and kissed her. She put her arms about him and clung to him, trembling, her lips pressed to his. In that supreme moment he felt not happiness, but a bitter desire to bear her out of the world into some higher sphere where the conditions of happiness might possibly exist. "On the highest pinnacle we reach," he thought, "we are granted the tormenting and chastening glimpse of what might be, had G.o.d, when he compounded his victims, been in a generous mood and completed them."

And she? she was a woman.

"You will resist no longer," he said, in a few moments.

"Ay, more surely than ever, now." Her voice was faint, but crossed by a note of terror. "In that moment I forgot my religion and my duty.

And what is so sweet,--it cannot be right."

"Do you so despise your womanhood, the most perfect thing about you?"

"Oh, let us return! I wanted to kiss you once. I meant to do that. But I should not--Let us go! Oh, I love you so! I love you so!"

He drew her closer and kissed her until her head fell forward and her body grew heavy. "I shall think and act now, for both," he said, unsteadily, although there was no lack of decision in his voice. "You are mine. I claim you, and I shall run no further risk of losing you.

Oh, you will forgive me--my love--"

Neither saw a man walking rapidly up the trail. Suddenly the man gave a bound and ran toward them. It was Reinaldo.

"Ah, I have found thee," he cried. "Listen, Don Diego Estenega, lord of the North, American, and would-be dictator of the Californias. Two hours ago I despatched a vaquero with a circular letter to the priests of the Department of the Californias, warning them each and all to write at once to the Archbishop of Mexico, and protest that the success of your ambitions would mean the downfall of the Catholic Church in California, and telling them your schemes. Thou art mighty, O Don Diego Estenega, but thou art powerless against the enmity of the Church. They are mightier than thou, and thou wilt never rule in California. Unhand my sister! Thou shalt not have her either. Thou shalt have nothing. Wilt thou unhand her?" he cried, enraged at Estenega's cold reception of his d.a.m.natory news. "Thou shouldst not have her if I tore thy heart from thy body."

Estenega looked contemptuously across Chonita's shoulder, although his heart was lead within him. "The last resource of the mean and down-trodden is revenge," he said. "Go. To-morrow I shall horsewhip you in the court-yard of Fort Ross."

Reinaldo, hot with excitement and thirst for further vengeance, uttered a shriek of rage and sprang upon him. Estenega saw the gleam of a knife and flung Chonita aside, catching the driving arm, the fury of his heart in his muscles. Reinaldo had the soft muscles of the cabellero, and panted and writhed in the iron grasp of the man who forgot that he grappled with the brother of a woman pa.s.sionately loved, remembered only that he rejoiced to fight to the death the man who had ruined his life. Reinaldo tried to thrust the knife into his back; Estenega suddenly threw his weight on the arm that held it, nearly wrenching it from its socket, s.n.a.t.c.hed the knife, and drove it to the heart of his enemy.

Then the hot blood in his body turned cold. He stood like a stone regarding Chonita, whose eyes, fixed upon him, were expanded with horror. Between them lay the dead body of her brother.

He turned with a groan and sat down on a fallen log, supporting his chin with his hand. His profile looked grim and worn and old. He stared unseeingly at the ground. Chonita stood, still looking at him.

The last act of her brother's life had been to lay the foundation of her lover's ruin; his death had completed it: all the South would rise did the slayer of an Iturbi y Moncada seek to rule it. She felt vaguely sorry for Reinaldo; but death was peace; this was h.e.l.l in living veins. The memory of the world beyond the forest grew indistinct. She recalled her first dream and turned in loathing from the bloodless selfishness of which it was the allegory. Superst.i.tion and tradition slipped into some inner pocket of her memory, there to rattle their dry bones together and fall to dust. She saw only the figure, relaxed for the first time, the profile of a man with his head on the block. She stepped across the body of her brother, and, kneeling beside Estenega, drew his head to her breast.

THE END