And still he did not turn his head. Perhaps he was only strolling for a few minutes with the new acquaintance, waiting for his usual companion to descend. Catalina leaned farther out. In a moment they passed the old mosque and disappeared.
She fell back from the window, unable for a moment to think coherently; the blood was pounding in her head. Her impulse was to run after them and twist her rival’s neck. She panted with hate, with the desire for vengeance, with the lust to kill. She stood like a wooden idol, but she boiled with the worst passions of the ancient races behind her. She conceived swift plans of vengeance. She would make friends with the girl, poison her peace of mind, kill her if she could not inveigle her into killing herself. The malignant, treacherous nature of the aboriginal controlled her, obsessed her. Civilization fell away; she was capable of the worst; she cared nothing for consequences. Literally, she wanted the enemy’s scalp. Then, without premeditation, she wept stormily, like an undisciplined child—or a savage—beside itself. And then the obsession passed and she was horrified.
It was not thus her imagination had dwelt upon the great revelation. She had visioned love among the stars, and had expected—groping, perhaps—to find it there. But to discover it in a fit of jealous rage, writhing in the most ignoble of the passions, her soul shrieking for revenge—she descended to the depths of discouragement, humiliation. She doubted if she were worthy of being loved even by a mere man—for the moment she despised the entire sex for Over’s weakness and inconstancy. Of course, like others, he had succumbed to this enchantress, who didn’t even wear her hair like a lady, and was therefore unworthy of even the rage she had flung after him. She longed to despise him so hotly that her love would be reduced to a charred ember, and thought she had succeeded; then it flamed all through her, and she sprang to her feet.
“There is one thing I can do,” she thought, and lit the candle. “I’ll leave to-morrow. Never will I go through this again, and never will I see him again if I can help it.”
She had the instinct of all wounded things, and a terror of the emotions that had torn her. Pain she could stand, and had a dim foreshadowing that in solitude she might attain that dignity of soul that sorrow and meditation bring to great natures, but never the passionate conflict of emotions that confused her now. As she locked her trunk there was a knock on her door. She answered mechanically, and Mrs. Rothe entered.