Were it I think I should not love you so much. Nor
could I bear to think of any change in you. Only
it will be harder--longer." Then she stretched out
her hand, and closed and opened it slowly. The
most obtuse could not have failed to read the old
simile of the steel in the velvet. "I shall win be-
cause it is my nature--and my power--to hold what
I grasp."

"But if they persistently refuse--"

"Dios!" she interrupted him. "Do you think that
your love is greater than mine? I was born with a
thousand years of love in me and had you not come
I should have gone alone with my dreams to the
grave. I am all women in one, not merely Concha
Arguello, a girl of sixteen." She clasped her hands
high above her head, lifting her eyes to the ashen
vault so soon to yield to the gay brush of dawn.

"Before all that great mystery," she said solemnly,
"I give myself to you forever, how much or how
little that may mean here on earth. Forever."



XVI

The Commandante of the San Francisco Company
sat opposite Rezanov with his mouth open, the lines