clasping her hand.

"Tell me, Alisanda, may I come?"

"Why ask me that?" she said, in an even voice. "Could I prevent if you
wished to try?"

"If I cross the barrier, may I hope?"

"There would yet be the gulf."

"Gulf or barrier, I swear I will find my way to you, though it be
through fire and flood! I will seek you out and win you, though you hide
your beauty beneath a nun's veil!"

Such was the force of my passion, I again saw her bosom rise to a
deep-drawn breath and the edges of her sensitive nostrils quiver. Yet
this time she did not blush, and her voice cut with its fine-drawn
irony: "Words--words!"

"I offer love. I ask nothing in turn but a word or a token--nothing
but--my lady's colors."

She turned and opened her eyes full to my gaze as she had opened them at
our parting in far-off Washington, and I looked down into their depths,
vainly seeking to penetrate the darkness. At last it seemed to me I saw
a gleam far down in the wells of mystery--a glow, faint yet warm, that
seemed to light my way to hope.

Suddenly the glow burst into a flame of golden glory--She was swaying
toward me, a line of pearls showing between her curving lips. But even
as I sought to clasp her in my arms, she eluded me and glided away,
vanishing through the farther window.

Half mad with delight, yet unable to believe my own eyes, I sought to
follow, the blood drumming in my ears from the wild intoxication of my
love. None too soon I heard behind me the sharp call of Don Pedro:
"_Hola, amigo!_ Have you gone deaf, that you do not answer?"

This, then, was why she had eluded me! It was his return which had
robbed me of that moment of all moments. My look as I turned was as
bitter as his was keen. My voice sounded to me like that of another man:
"What! Back so soon, senor?"

"Senor?" he repeated, taken aback by the formal address. "Yet it is as
well, Juan. All our plans are blasted. Hereafter it would seem we are to
be strangers. I have no faith in the promises of that man."

"You do well to distrust him," I said. "I might have foreseen the
outcome of plans in which he was to play a part."

"Whom can we trust in this self-seeking age! I find myself doubting even
the fair promises of your great statesman Burr."

"Of our discredited politician Burr!" I cried. "Don Pedro, he has no
claim upon me, and you have many. Let me tell you, I begin to doubt him,
even as I doubt our pompous General. I have reason to believe that
Colo