Both were silent a moment, thinking, each in her different way, of the contrast in their lives. Then Eveley went on, more slowly:
"I feel sometimes that we are living on the crest of a terrible upheaval--that we are on the edge of a seething volcano which is threatening and rumbling beneath us, each day growing fiercer and more ominous, and that presently may come chaos, and we on the crater of life will be dragged down into the furnace with the rest. I suppose," she added apologetically, "it is because of the conditions that always follow a war, the political unrest, the social chaos, the anarchistic tendencies of every one. I am not in the midst of things enough to understand them, but even up here on the top of our canyon, we sometimes get a blast of the hot air from below, and it troubles us. Then we try to forget, and go on with our playing. But the volcano still rumbles beneath."
Eveley slipped her hand out to take Marie's and found it icy cold.
"Did--did you ever feel so before?" asked Marie in a low strange voice. "That you were living on the rim of a volcano, ready to catch and crush you?"
"No, not before. It is just now--after the war. Conditions were never the same before."
Then Marie burst into a passion of tears. "It is my fault," she sobbed. "It is because I am here. All my life I have lived in the crater of a volcano, and I have brought it upon you. It is a curse I carry with me. It is the chaos from which I have come, and to which I must go again when I leave you--it is that which destroys your peace."
Frightened and astonished, Eveley soothed her, cradling her in her arms. "You little silly," she said tenderly. "You dear little goose. Don't you believe any such nonsense as that. We are in a condition of turmoil, our United States and all the rest of the world. It is not the affairs of your Mexico that worry me--it is the tempest in my own country. And don't you ever talk any more about going back. You shall never go back. You are to stay here with me forever and ever, world without end, amen. You will, won't you?"
Marie only stirred a little, and did not answer.
"Marie," cried Eveley, her voice sharp with fear. "Do you ever think really of going back to--that? Answer me." And she gripped Marie's soft shoulder with strong fingers.