Page:The plumed serpent - 1926.djvu/223

“Not as you are.”

“How not as I am? He is Mexican.”

“He seems to me to belong to the old, old Europe,” she said.

“And he seems to me to belong to the old, old Mexico—and also to the new,” he added quickly.

“But you don’t believe in him.”

“How?”

“You—yourself. You don’t believe in him. You think it is like everything else, a sort of game. Everything is a sort of game, a put-up job, to you Mexicans. You don’t really believe, in anything.”

“How not believe? I not believe in Ramón?—Well, perhaps not, in that way of kneeling before him and spreading out my arms and shedding tears on his feet. But I—I believe in him, too. Not in your way, but in mine. I tell you why. Because he has the power to compel me. If he hadn’t the power to compel me, how should I believe?”

“It is a queer sort of belief that is compelled,” she said.

“How else should one believe, except by being compelled? I like Ramón for that, that he can compel me. When I grew up, and my godfather could not compel me to believe, I was very unhappy. It made me very unhappy.—But Ramón compels me, and that is very good. It makes me very happy, when I know I can’t escape. It would make you happy too.”

“To know I could not escape from Don Ramón?” she said ironically.

“Yes, that also. And to know you could not escape from Mexico. And even from such a man, as me.”

She paused in the dark before she answered, sardonically:

“I don’t think it would make me happy to feel I couldn’t escape from Mexico. No, I feel, unless I was sure I could get out any day, I couldn’t bear to be here.”

In her mind she thought: And perhaps Ramón is the only one I couldn’t quite escape from, because he really touches me somewhere inside. But from you, you little Cipriano, I should have no need even to escape, because I could not be caught by you.

“Ah!” he said quickly. “You think so. But then you don’t know. You can only think with American thoughts. It is natural. From your education, you have only American