"Because I am a man, I suppose. I could not sit tamely down and see you go."
She looked at him with a slight access of interest.
A man? Perhaps he was, after all. And his well-bred, bony face looked very determined, albeit the eyes were wistful. Suddenly she felt sorry for him; and she had never experienced a pang of sym-pathy for a suitor before. She leaned forward and patted his hand.
"I cannot marry you, dear Weeliam," she said, and never had he seen her so sweet and adorable, although he noted with a pang that her mouth was already drawn with a firmer line. "But what mat-ter? I shall never marry at all. For many years--forty, fifty perhaps--I shall sit here on the veranda, and you shall read to me."
And then she shivered violently. But she set her mouth until it was almost straight, and picked up the little dress. "Not that, perhaps," she said quietly in a moment. "I sometimes think I should like to be a nun, that, after all, it is my vocation.
Not a cloistered one, for that is but a selfish life.
But to teach, to do good, to forget myself. There are no convents in California, but I could join the Third Order of the Franciscans, and wear the gray habit, and be set aside by the world as one that only lived to make it a little better. To forget oneself!
That, after all, may be the secret of happiness. I envy none of my friends that are married. They have the dear children, it is true. But the children grow up and go away, and then one is fat and eats many dulces and the siesta grows longer and longer and the face very brown. That is life in California.
I should prefer to work and pray, and"--with a flash of insight that made her drop her work again and stare through the rose-vines--"to dream always of some beautiful thing that youth promised but never gave, and that given might have ended in dull routine and a brain so choked with little things that memory too held nothing else."
"But Concha," cried Sturgis eagerly, "I could give you far better than that. I could take you away from here--to Boston, to Europe. You should see--live your life--in the great cities you have dreamed of--that you hardly believe in--that were made to enjoy. I have told you of the theater, the opera--you should go to the finest in the world.
You should wear the most beautiful gowns and jewels, go to courts, see the great works of art--I am not trying to bribe you," he stammered, flushing miserably. "God forbid that I should stoop to any-thing as mean as that. But it all rushed upon me suddenly that I could give you so much that you were made for, with this worthless money of mine.
And what happiness to be in Europe with you--what--what--"
His voice trembled and broke, and he dared not look at her. Again she stared through the vines.
A splendid and thrilling panorama rose beyond them, her bosom heaved, her lips parted. She saw herself in it, and not alone. And not, alas, with the honest youth whose words had inspired it. In a moment she shook her head and turned her eyes on the flushed, averted face of her suitor.
"I shall never see Europe," she said gently, "and I shall never marry."
"Not if this Russian asks you?" cried Sturgis, in his jealous misery.
But Concha's anger did not rise again. "He has no intention of asking a little California girl to share the honors of one of the most brilliant careers in Europe," she said calmly. "Set your mind at rest. He has paid me no more attention than is due my position as the daughter of the Commandante, and perhaps of La Favorita. If I flirt a little and he flirts in response, that is nothing. Is he not then a man? But he will forget me in a month. The world, his world, is full of pretty girls."
"A week ago you would not have said that," said Sturgis shrewdly. "There has been nothing in your life to make you so humble."
"I cannot explain, but he seems to have brought the great world with him. I know, I understand so many things that I had not dreamed of a week ago. A week! Madre de Dios!"
And Sturgis, who after all was a gallant gentle-man, made no comment.
