"They'd better not touch him again," broke in her lover swiftly.
"It's a great comfort to me, Manuel, that you have blotted out your own quarrel with him. It was magnanimous, what I should expect of you."
He said nothing, but the hand that lay on hers seemed suddenly to stiffen. A kind of fear ran shivering through her. Quickly she rose from the couch.
"Manuel, tell me that I am right, that you don't mean to ... hurt him?" Her dark eyes searched his unflinchingly. "You don't mean ... you can't mean ... that----?"
"Let us forget the American and remember only that we love, my beloved," he pleaded.
"No ... No!" The voice of the girl was sharp and imperative. "I want the truth. Is it that you are still thinking of murdering him, Manuel?"
The sting of her words brought a flush to his cheeks. "I fight fair, Valencia. I set against his life my own, with all the happiness that has come flooding it. Nor is it that I seek the man's life. For me he might live a thousand years--and welcome. But my honor----"
"No, Manuel. No--no--no! I will not have it. If you are betrothed to me your life is mine. You shall not risk it in a barbarous duel."
"Let us change the subject, dear heart."
"Not till I hear you say that you have given up this wicked intention of yours."
He gave up the attempt to evade her and met her fairly as one man does another.
"I can't say that, Valencia, not even for you. This quarrel lies between him and me. I have suffered humiliation and disgrace. Until those are wiped out there must be war between me and the American."
"Since the day I first wore your ring, Manuel, I have asked nothing of you. I ask now that you will forget the slight this man has put upon you ... because I ask it of you with all my heart."
A slight tremor ran through his blood. He felt himself slipping from his place with her.
"I can't, Valencia. You don't know what you ask, how impossible it is for me--a Pesquiera, son of my honored fathers--to grant such a request." He stretched his hands toward her imploringly.
"Yet you say you love me?"
"Heaven knows whether it is not true, my cousin."
"You want me to believe that, even though you refuse the first real request I ever made of you?"
"Anything else in the world that is in my power."
"It is easy to say that, Manuel, when it isn't something else I want. Give me this American's life. I shall know, then, that you love me."