es, I would choose that
Huaracha should renew the war against us and that you should join
yourself to him, or even to Urco, and strive to tear me from the Throne,
for then even if I were slain, I should die with honour."

"That I could never do," I answered sadly.

"No, my brother Hubert (for now he called me by my English name again),
that you could never do, being what you are, as I know well. So like the
rest of us you must bear your burden. Mayhap it may please my gods, or
your gods in the end, and in some way that I cannot foresee, to give you
this woman whom you seek. But of my free will I will never give her to
you. To me the deed would be as though in your land of England the King
commanded the consecrated bread and cups of wine to be snatched from the
hands of the priests of your temples and cast to the dogs, or given to
cheer the infidels within your gates, or dragged away the nuns from your
convents to become their lemans. What would you think of such a king
in your own country? And what," he added with meaning, "would you have
thought of me if there I had stolen one of these nuns because she was
beautiful and I desired her as a wife?"

Now although Kari's words stung me because of the truth that was in
them, I answered that to me this matter wore another face. Also that
Quilla had become a Virgin of the Sun, not of her own free will, but to
escape from Urco.

"Yes, my brother," he answered, "because you believe my religion to be
idolatry, and do not understand that the Sun to me is the symbol and
garment of God, and that when we of the Inca blood, or those of us who
have the inner knowledge, talk of him as our Father, we mean that we are
the children of God, though the common people are taught otherwise. For
the rest, this lady took her vows of her own free will and of her secret
reasons I know nothing, any more than I know why she offered herself in
marriage to Urco before she found you upon the island. For you I grieve,
and for her also; yet I would have you remember that, as your own
priests teach, in every life that is not brutal there must be loss,
sorrow, and sacrifice, since by these steps only man can climb towards
the things of the spirit. Pluck then such flowers as you will from the
garden that Fate gives you, but leave this one white bloom alone."

In such words as these he preached at me, till at length I could bear no
more, and said roughly:

"To me it is a very evil thing, O Inca, to sepa