He turned and went out, a mercy she appreciated when, after a puzzled glance at the paper he had stolen from Peters, her eye was guided by the heavy ink scorings to the article that set forth Seyd's divorce. At first she hardly realized its import. But when she did--surely the hand that guided the pen had achieved revenge far beyond its owner's blackest hope! Going out, Sebastien heard the paper crackle. Looking back, he saw her standing frozen, eyes wide and black in her mute white face; and, stricken with sudden pity, he softly closed the door.
But he did not go away. He knew her too well. Given her wild Irish blood plus her Spanish pride there could come but one result, and while she struggled toward it within he paced the _corredor_ without. When at last she opened the door and came on him there he knew that he had won by the scorn that set her soft mouth in straight red lines. In the dusk of the _corredor_ her face loomed, pale and drawn, the eyes red and swollen. But when she saw the deep pity in his stern eyes her own lost something of their hardness.
"You were always kind--and wise." Her mouth quivering, she gave him both hands. "'Twould have made for my good had I listened to you more."
For him it was a perilous moment. The touch of her hands aroused an intense desire to seize and comfort her with kisses. Had he given way to it she would have surely been shocked out of the resolution that had been born of her anger and shame. But the habit of years enabled him to keep the impulse under restraint. She went quietly to the end.
"I am very grateful--I would like to make some return. If we had not grown up together I should no doubt have loved you from the beginning in the way you wished, for you are closer to the man of my girlish dreams than any other I have ever known." She smiled wanly. "He does not exist, my dream man, or, if he did, what use could he have for such a wild, naughty girl as I? So, if you still want me--"
"Want you!" He would have drawn her to him, but she pulled back.
"Not yet! I like you, have always loved you--in a sisterly way. I must have time to change my viewpoint. Give me a month?"
"If you still wish it I will be your wife."
As before said, the last piece of machinery and the first rain arrived simultaneously at Santa Gertrudis. The break in the summer heat came with a south wind which herded mountainous vapors in from the warm Pacific. All night the rain fell in sheets that set the thirsty arroyos running bank-high and raised the river ten feet. Then, after the pleasant tropical fashion, the downpour ceased, and day broke with a blaze of sunlight over the Barranca.