Men drowned themselves in her eyes.

Maria Valenzuela was rich--richer than I, who am accounted very
rich in Ecuador. But John Harned did not care for her money. He
had a heart--a funny heart. He was a fool. He did not go to
Lima. He left the steamer at Guayaquil and followed her to
Quito. She was coming home from Europe and other places. I do
not see what she found in him, but she liked him. This I know
for a fact, else he would not have followed her to Quito. She
asked him to come. Well do I remember the occasion. She said:

"Come to Quito and I will show you the bullfight--brave,
clever, magnificent!"

But he said: "I go to Lima, not Quito. Such is my passage
engaged on the steamer."

"You travel for pleasure--no?" said Maria Valenzuela; and she
looked at him as only Maria Valenzuela could look, her eyes
warm with the promise.

And he came. No; he did not come for the bull-fight. He came
because of what he had seen in her eyes. Women like Maria
Valenzuela are born once in a hundred years. They are of no
country and no time. They are what you call goddesses. Men fall
down at their feet. They play with men and run them through
their pretty fingers like sand. Cleopatra was such a woman they
say; and so was Circe. She turned men into swine. Ha! ha! It is
true--no?