of one beloved. Above all, it is the impossibility to cease to love,
no matter what reason, or prudence, or jealousy, or disapproval, or
terrible discoveries, may dictate. Let the mind sit on high and argue
the soul's mate out of doors, it will rebound, when all is said and
done, like a rubber ball when the pressure of the finger is removed.
As for Chonita she is the lost part of me."

He left that day, and without seeing Chonita again. Valencia was in
wildest delirium for a week; at the end of the second every hair on
her head, her brows, and her eyelashes had fallen. She looked like a
white mummy, a ghastly pitiful caricature of the beautiful woman whose
arrows quivered in so many hearts. They rolled her in a blanket and
took her home; and then I sought Chonita, who had barely left her
room and never gone to Valencia's. I told her that I had witnessed the
curse, and described the result.

"Have you no remorse?" I asked.

"None."

"You have ruined the beauty, the happiness, the fortune, of another
woman."

"I have done what I intended."

"Do you realize that again you have raised a barrier between yourself
and your religion? You do not look very repentant."

"Revenge is sweeter than religion."