is, "I am tired of fiestas, and truly at Santiago they
cannot be very grand. After all, you miss little. Ah, Dona Fausta, you
should see them in Spain. And," he continued, in a tone that was almost
a whisper, "you should let Spain see you."

In this wise the two young people talked together. And when the
fractions of an hour had passed them by unmarked, the old woman appeared
again on the porch, and Ruis withdrew. On reaching the hacienda he went
to the room which he occupied, and tore into bits the scrappy letters of
his Madridlene. "To the deuce," he muttered, as he stretched himself out
beneath the mosquito netting, "to the deuce with thin women and the
communion of souls."

The day following Ruis did not venture to make a second visit, but he
loitered on the red road both in the clear forenoon and in the
slumbering dusk; but he loitered in vain. On the morrow his success was
not greater: yet on the succeeding day his heart gave an exultant throb;
she was there. It was not necessary for him to be verbose. His manner
was caressing as the air, and her eyes were eloquent, almost as eloquent
as his own. Before they parted they had agreed upon a tryst, a spot
wholly sheltered by cedars and tamarinds, through which a brook ran, and
where tendrils with a thousand coils embraced the willing trees as would
they smother them with flowers. And there each day they met. Love with
them was like the sumptuous vegetation in which they moved--swift of
growth. To Ruis, Fausta was the most perfect of playmates, a comrade
that each day brought him some fresh surprise. She was at once naive and
imperious, docile and self-willed. He noticed that she was friends with
the mimosa, for once, when she touched the sensitive leaves, they did
not shrink, the timidity was gone. And once, when she spoke of her
father, who had been shot as a conspirator, her anger was like a storm
on the coast, glorious and terrible to behold. She was sweet indeed, yet
heat sugar and abruptly it boils. To Fausta, Ruis was present and future
besides. As for the past she had none save in so far as it had been a
preparation for him. He had told her that she should be countess, though
for that she cared nothing, except that in being countess she would be
his wife as well. And so over constant meetings two months went by. In
their Eden, Ruis at first was usually the earliest to arrive, and when
he heard her footfall he would hasten to meet her and hold her in his
arms.