me
Chloe. For yourself you made one of vines. But your mother snatched
away my crown, and after mashing it with a stone mixed it with the
_gogo_ with which she was going to wash our heads. The tears came into
your eyes and you said that she did not understand mythology. 'Silly
boy,' your mother exclaimed, 'you'll see how sweet your hair will
smell afterwards.' I laughed, but you were offended and would not talk
with me, and for the rest of the day appeared so serious that then
I wanted to cry. On our way back to the town through the hot sun,
I picked some sage leaves that grew beside the path and gave them
to you to put in your hat so that you might not get a headache. You
smiled and caught my hand, and we made up."

Ibarra smiled with happiness as he opened his pocketbook and took from
it a piece of paper in which were wrapped some dry, blackened leaves
which gave off a sweet odor. "Your sage leaves," he said, in answer
to her inquiring look. "This is all that you have ever given me."

She in turn snatched from her bosom a little pouch of white
satin. "You must not touch this," she said, tapping the palm of his
hand lightly. "It's a letter of farewell."

"The one I wrote to you before leaving?"

"Have you ever written me any other, sir?"

"And what did I say to you then?"

"Many fibs, excuses of a delinquent debtor," she answered smilingly,
thus giving him to understand how sweet to her those fibs were. "Be
quiet now and I'll read it to you. I'll leave out your fine phrases
in order not to make a martyr of you."

Raising the paper to the height of her eyes so that the youth might
not see her face, she began: "'_My_'--but I'll not read what follows
that because it's not true."

Her eyes ran along some lines.

"'My father wishes me to go away, in spite of all my pleadings. 'You
are a man now,' he told me, 'and you must think about your future
and about your duties. You must learn the science of life, a thing
which your fatherland cannot teach you, so that you may some day be
useful to it. If you remain here in my shadow, in this environment
of business affairs, you will not learn to look far ahead. The
day in which you lose me you will find yourself like the plant
of which our poet Baltazar tells: grown in the water, its leaves
wither at the least scarcity of moisture and a moment's heat dries
it up. Don't you understand? You are almost a young man, and yet you
weep!' These reproaches hurt me and I confesse