Page:The plumed serpent - 1926.djvu/359

CHAP: XXI. THE OPENING OF THE CHURCH.

Kate went back to her house in Sayula, and Cipriano back to his command in the city.

“Will you not come with me?” he said “Shall we not make a civil marriage, and live in same house together?”

“No,” she said. “I am married to you by Quetzalcoatl, no other. I will be your wife in the world of Quetzalcoatl, no other. And if the star has risen between us, we will watch it.”

Conflicting feelings played in his dark eyes. He could " not bear even to be the least bit thwarted. Then the strong, rather distant look came back.

“It is very good,” he said. “It is the best.”

And he went away without looking back.

Kate returned to her house, to her servants and rocking-chair. Inside herself she kept very still and almost thoughtless, taking no count of time. What was to unfold must unfold of itself.

She no longer feared the nights, when she was shut alone in her darkness. But she feared the days a little. She shrank so mortally from contact.

She opened her bedroom window one morning, and looked down to the lake. The sun had come, and queer blotty shadows were on the hills beyond the water. Way down at the water's edge a woman was pouring water from a calabash bowl over a statuesque pig, rapidly and assiduously. The little group was seen in silhouette the pale, dun lake.

But impossible to stand at open window on the little lane. An old man suddenly appeared from nowhere, offering her a leaf full of tiny fish, charales, like splinters of glass, for ten centavos, and a girl was unfolding three eggs from the ragged corner of her rebozo, thrusting them imploringly forward to Kate. An old woman was shambling up with a sad story, Kate knew. She fled from her window and the importunity.

At the same instant, the sound that always made her heart stand still woke on the invisible air. It was the sound