"No," she said thoughtfully. "I will confess--what matters it?--I
often dreamed that this would come just because I believed it would
not. But why should one control the imagination when it alone can give
us happiness for a little while? I gave it rein, for I thought that
one-half of my life was to be passed in that unreal but by no means
niggardly world. And I thought of everything. To change your religion
would mean the ruin of your career; moreover, it is not a possibility
of your character. 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 because 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."