pay back love for love."

Quilla made no answer, and I thought that she was angry and would go
away. But she did not; indeed, she sat herself down upon the stone at my
side and covered her face with her hands as I had done and began to weep
as I had done. Now in my turn I asked her:

"Why do you weep?"

"Because I, too, must know loneliness, and with it shame, Lord Hurachi."

At these words my heart beat and passion flamed up in me. Stretching
out my hand I drew hers away and in the dying light gazed at the face
beneath. Lo! on its loveliness there was a look which could not be
misread.

"Do you, then, also love?" I whispered.

"Aye, more, I think, than ever woman loved before. From the moment when
first I saw you sleeping in the moonbeams on the desert isle, I knew my
fate had found me, and that I loved. I fought against it because I must,
but that love has grown and grown, till now I am all love, and, having
given everything, have no more left to give."

When I heard this, making no answer, I swept her into my arms and kissed
her, and there she lay upon my breast and kissed me back.

"Let me go, and hear me," she murmured presently, "for you are strong
and I am weak."

I obeyed, and she sank back upon the stone.

"My lord," she said, "our case is very sad, or at least my case is sad,
since though you being a man may love often, I can love but once, and,
my lord, it may not be."

"Why not?" I asked hoarsely. "Your people think me a god; cannot a god
take whom he wills to wife?"

"Not when she is vowed to another god, he who will be Inca; not when on
her, mayhap, hangs the fate of nations."

"We might fly, Quilla."

"Whither could the God-from-the-Sea fly and whither could fly the
daughter of the Moon, who is vowed to the son of the Sun in marriage,
save to death?"

"There are worse things than death, Quilla."

"Aye, but my life is in pawn. I must live that my people may not die.
Myself I offered it to this cause and now, being royal, I cannot take it
back again for my own joy. It is better to be shamed with honour than to
be loved in the lap of shame."

"What then?" I asked hopelessly.

"Only this, that above us are the gods, and--heard you not the oracle of
Rimac that declared to me that I should slip from the hated arms, that
the Sun should be my shelter, and in the beloved arms I should sleep at
last, though from the vengeance of the god betrayed I must fly fast
and far? I think that this mea