“Yes,” returned Shere.  “But I was always aware that I could not offer you your match, and I found, I thought, quite suddenly that evening a way to make my insufficiency less insufficient.”

“Less insufficient by a strip of brass upon your shoulder,” she exclaimed passionately.  She came and stood opposite to him.  “Well, that strip of brass stops us both.  It stops my ears, it must stop your lips too.  Where did we meet first?”

“In Paris.”

“Go on!”

“At a Carlist—­” and Shere broke off and took a step towards her.  “Oh!” he exclaimed, “I never thought of it.  I imagined you went there to laugh as I did.”

“Does one laugh at one’s creed?” she cried violently; and Shere with a helpless gesture of the hands sat down in a chair.  Esteban had fooled him, and why, the padre had shown Shere that afternoon, Esteban had fooled him irreparably; it did not need a glance at Christina, as she stood facing him, to convince him of that.  There was no anger against him, he noticed, in her face, but on the contrary a great friendliness and pity.  But he knew her at that moment.  Her looks might soften, but not her resolve.  She was heart-whole a Carlist.  Carlism was her creed, and her creed would be more than a creed, it would be a passion too.  So it was not to persuade her but rather in acknowledgment that he said: 

“And one does not change one’s creed?”

“No,” she answered, and suggested, but in a doubtful voice, “but one can put off one’s uniform.”

Shere stood up.  “Neither can one do that,” he said simply.  “It is quite true that I sought my commission upon your account.  I would just as readily have become a Carlist had I known.  I had no inclination one way or the other, only a great hope and longing for you.  But I have made the mistake, and I cannot retrieve it.  The strip of brass obliges me to good faith.  Already you will understand the uniform has had its inconvenience.  It sent me to Cuba, and set me armed against men almost of my own blood.  There was no escape then; there is no escape now.”

Christina moved closer to him.  The reticence with which Shere spoke, and the fact that he made no claim upon her made her voice very gentle.

“No,” she agreed.  “I thought that you would make that answer.  And in my heart I do not think that I should like to have heard from you any other.”

“Thank you,” said Shere.  He drew out his watch.  “I have still some way to go.  I have to reach Olvera by eleven;” and he was aware that Christina at his side became at once very still, so that even her breathing was arrested.  For her sigh of emotion at the abrupt mention of parting he was thankful, but it made him keep his eyes turned from her lest a sight of any distress of hers might lead him to falter from his purpose.

“You are riding to Olvera?” she asked, after a pause, and in a queer muffled voice.

“Yes.  So I must say good-bye,” and now he turned to her.  But she was too quick for him to catch a glimpse of her face.  She had already turned from him and was walking towards the door.