ierce suddenness, and passed
him and was gone again.

The poor fellow looked after her small swift form mournfully.

"If she had wanted him," he said, "he would have made her a good
husband, and we should have been brothers. But she is not easy to
please, and she would not give one a chance who did not please her at
first. And there is no one who slays a bull as he does!"

Pepita flew like a bird until she reached the low wall where the jasmine
grew, at the spot where she had stood the night before. There she
stopped, panting. The breath of the jasmine filled all the air about
her. She looked up the white road.

A strange new passion filled her. She did not know whether it was anger
or not, but if it was anger it was of a new kind, with more pain in
it than she was used to. He would not come again--not at all again!
He would not appear at her side as if he had sprung from the earth; he
would not follow her or plead with her, or look at her every moment he
was near her; he would not try to make her speak. Only last night he was
here in this very spot, and now he would never speak like that again. He
would forget her, not care for her--forget her, Pepita.

She would not believe it. She knew he could not--they never did; they
always loved her best and wanted no one else. And still the labored
throbbing went on in her side and she panted for breath.

"Come back," she cried, looking up the white road. "I tell you to come
back. You shall. Do you hear? I tell you--I--Pepita!"

But there was no answer, no sound of any footstep, no sign of any
advancing shadow. The road stretched out its white length in utter
solitude, and a strange, wild look came into her beautiful little face.

"Do you not hear?" she persisted. "I will not speak to you if you do
come; I will give you nothing; I will not look at you; but you shall
come because I will it--because I am Pepita."

Still there was only silence and loneliness. Suddenly she flung out her
hands and stamped her foot.

"I will kill you," she said. "If you do not come--I will kill you!"

Then almost immediately she put her clinched hand to her beating side
and sank down upon the earth, burying her face in the dew-wet fragrant
tangle of the jasmine.

But he did not come back. And yet every night she went and stood by the
low wall, and looked up the white road and watched and waited. For a
long time she did not know what she intended to do if he should appear.
All was vague i