hed like the desert, and I shall
wither and die."

"Die?" echoed Blanch. "Nobody dies of love nowadays, Senorita," and she
laughed lightly.

"Perhaps not among your people, but with Indians it is different. When
we love it is terrible--our passion becomes our life, our whole
existence! Such a confession sounds absurd perhaps, but you assumed an
air of superiority--racial superiority, I mean--a thing which I know to
be as false as it is presumptuous. I might assume the airs and attitude
of one of your race if I chose, but you laughed, and the race-pride in
me cries out that I should be to you what I really am--an Indian, not
that which I have learned and borrowed from the white race."

"How extraordinary!" thought Blanch. Surely such passion was short lived
and a weak admission on the part of her rival. She was a true character
of melodrama--one which she had seen a hundred times on the stage. The
battle was hers already--she would win. She heaved a sigh of relief, and
drawing herself up to her full height, assumed an attitude of ease, an
air of patronage and condescension that only Blanch Lennox could adopt.
She could afford to be generous to a child, treat with lenience this
clever _ingenue_ who in this age could die, or at least imagine herself
dying of love.

"Perhaps," resumed Chiquita, with an air of naivete that seemed
perfectly natural to her, "you women do not love as passionately as your
darker sisters?"

"Oh, I don't know about that, Senorita," answered Blanch with warmth.
"At any rate, you in all probability will have an opportunity to judge
that for yourself."

Chiquita gave a little laugh, then said: "Senorita, you love Captain
Forest and so do I. Let it, therefore, be a fair fight between us, and
in order that you may know you can trust me, I give you this," and
drawing a small silver-mounted dagger from out her hair, she handed it
to Blanch who took it wonderingly.

"It is often safer," she added, "for a man to go unarmed in this land
than for a woman. But as I said, I shall henceforth be to you what I
am--an Indian. It is what a woman of my people would do were she to
meet you in my country under similar circumstances; what I would have
done had I met you before I came here. The knife signifies that, with it
goes the sharp edge of my tongue--that I shall take no unfair advantage
of you."

Blanch toyed musingly with the pretty two-edged knife, admiring its
richly carved silver handle. Surely sh