the rest. I won you because I was brave and lay
at your side upon the stone of sacrifice, where you
kissed me and told me that you loved me. But
you never loved me, not truly, all the while you were
thinking of the Lily maid. I knew it then, as
I know it now, though I tried to deceive myself.
I was beautiful in those days and this is something
with a man. I was faithful and that is more, and
once or twice you thought that you loved me.
Now I wish that those Teules had come an hour later,
and we had died together there upon the stone, that
is I wish it for my own sake, not for yours. Then
we escaped and the great struggle came. I told
you then that I understood it all. You had kissed
me on the stone of sacrifice, but in that moment you
were as one dead; when you came back to life, it was
otherwise. But fortune took the game out of your
hands and you married me, and swore an oath to me,
and this oath you have kept faithfully. You married
me but you did not know whom you married; you thought
me beautiful, and sweet, and true, and all these things
I was, but you did not understand that I was far apart
from you, that I was still a savage as my forefathers
had been. You thought that I had learned your
ways, perchance even you thought that I reverenced
your God, as for your sake I have striven to do, but
all the while I have followed the ways of my own people
and I could not quite forget my own gods, or at the
least they would not suffer me, their servant, to
escape them. For years and years I put them from
me, but at last they were avenged and my heart mastered
me, or rather they mastered me, for I knew nothing
of what I did some few nights since, when I celebrated
the sacrifice to Huitzel and you saw me at the ancient
rites.
’All these years you had been true to me and
I had borne you children whom you loved; but you loved
them for their own sake, not for mine, indeed, at
heart you hated the Indian blood that was mixed in
their veins with yours. Me also you loved in
a certain fashion and this half love of yours drove
me well nigh mad; such as it was, it died when you
saw me distraught and celebrating the rites of my forefathers
on the teocalli yonder, and you knew me for what I
am, a savage. And now the children who linked
us together are dead—one by one they died
in this way and in that, for the curse which follows
my blood descended upon them—and your love
for me is dead with them. I alone remain alive,
a monument of past days, and I die also.
’Nay, be silent; listen to me, for my time is
short. When you bade me call you “husband”
no longer, then I knew that it was finished. I
obey you, I put you from me, you are no more my husband,
and soon I shall cease to be your wife; still, Teule,
I pray you listen to me. Now it seems to you
in your sorrow, that your days are done and that there
is no happiness left for you. This is not so.
You are still but a man in the beginning of middle
age, and you are yet strong. You will escape