reason
or politics. The most forlorn hope in the most forlorn army on earth
would have been safer than that for which you made me stay here. When
you make war you may retreat, but not when you spend your time in
inciting poor ignorant fools to kill and to die."

His tone remained light, and as if unaware of his presence she stood
motionless, her hands clasped lightly, the fan hanging down from her
interlaced fingers. He waited for a while, and then--

"I shall go to the wall," he said, with a sort of jocular desperation.

Even that declaration did not make her look at him. Her head remained
still, her eyes fixed upon the house of the Avellanos, whose chipped
pilasters, broken cornices, the whole degradation of dignity was hidden
now by the gathering dusk of the street. In her whole figure her lips
alone moved, forming the words--

"Martin, you will make me cry."

He remained silent for a minute, startled, as if overwhelmed by a sort
of awed happiness, with the lines of the mocking smile still stiffened
about his mouth, and incredulous surprise in his eyes. The value of a
sentence is in the personality which utters it, for nothing new can be
said by man or woman; and those were the last words, it seemed to him,
that could ever have been spoken by Antonia. He had never made it up
with her so completely in all their intercourse of small encounters; but
even before she had time to turn towards him, which she did slowly with
a rigid grace, he had begun to plead--

"My sister is only waiting to embrace you. My father is transported with
joy. I won't say anything of my mother! Our mothers were like sisters.
There is the mail-boat for the south next week--let us go. That Moraga
is a fool! A man like Montero is bribed. It's the practice of the
country. It's tradition--it's politics. Read 'Fifty Years of Misrule.'"

"Leave poor papa alone, Don Martin. He believes--"

"I have the greatest tenderness for your father," he began, hurriedly.
"But I love you, Antonia! And Moraga has miserably mismanaged this
business. Perhaps your father did, too; I don't know. Montero was
bribeable. Why, I suppose he only wanted his share of this famous loan
for national development. Why didn't the stupid Sta. Marta people give
him a mission to Europe, or something? He would have taken five years'
salary in advance, and gone on loafing in Paris, this stupid, ferocious
Indio!"

"The man," she said, thoughtfully, and very calm before this out