Page:The plumed serpent - 1926.djvu/224

thoughts, U.S.A. thoughts, to think with. Nearly all women are like that: even Mexican women of the Spanish-Mexican class. They are all thinking nothing but U.S.A. thoughts, because those are the ones that go with the way they dress their hair. And so it is with you. You think like a modern woman, because you belong to the Anglo-Saxon or Teutonic world, and dress your hair in a certain way, and have money, and are altogether free.—But you only think like this because you have had these thoughts put in your head, just as in Mexico you spend centavos and pesos, because that is the Mexican money you have put in your pocket. It’s what they give you at the bank.—So when you say you are free, you are not free. You are compelled all the time to be thinking U.S.A. thoughts—compelled, I must say. You have not as much choice as a slave. As the peons must eat tortillas, tortillas, tortillas, because there is nothing else, you must think these U.S.A. thoughts, about being a woman and being free. Every day you must eat those tortillas, tortillas.—Till you don’t know how you would like something else.”

“What else should I like?” she said, with a grimace at the darkness.

“Other thoughts, other feelings.—You are afraid of such a man as me, because you think I should not treat you à l'américaine. You are quite right. I should not treat you as an American woman must be treated. Why should I? I don’t wish to. It doesn’t seem good to me.”

“You would treat a woman like a real old Mexican, would you? Keep her ignorant, and shut her up?” said Kate sarcastically.

“I could not keep her ignorant if she did not start ignorant. But what more I had to teach her wouldn’t be in the American style of teaching.”

“What then?”

“Quien sabe! Ça reste a voir.”

“Et continuera a y rester,” said Kate, laughing.