e the fool."

She looked at her lover, and seeing his face and eyes she had sought to
bring before her in the days that she had waited for him, she rushed to
him.

"Lolita!" he whispered. "Lolita!"

But she could only sob as she felt his arms and his lips. And when
presently he heard her voice again murmuring brokenly to him in the way
that he knew and had said over in his mind and dwelt upon through the
desert stages he had ridden, he trembled, and with savage triumph drew
her close, and let his doubt and the thoughts that had chilled and
changed him sink deep beneath the flood of this present rapture. "My
life!" she said. "Toda mi vida! All my life!" Through the open door the
air of the canon blew cool into the little room overheated by the fire
and the lamp, and in time they grew aware of the endless rustling of the
trees, and went out and stood in the darkness together, until it ceased
to be darkness, and their eyes could discern the near and distant shapes
of their world. The sky was black and splendid, with four or five
planets too bright for lesser stars to show, and the promontories of the
keen mountains shone almost as in moonlight. A certain hill down towards
the Tinaja and its slate ledge caught Genesmere's eye, and Lolita felt
him shudder, and she wound her arm more tightly about him.

"What is it?" she said.

"Nothing." He was staring at the hill. "Nothing," he replied to himself.

"Dreamer, come!" said Lolita, pulling him. "It is cold here in the
night--and if you choose to forget, I choose you shall remember."

"What does this girl want now?"

"The cards! our cards!"

"Why, to be sure!" He ran after her, and joy beat in her heart at the
fleet kiss he tried for and half missed. She escaped into the room,
laughing for delight at her lover's being himself again--his own right
self that she talked with always in the long days she waited alone.

"Take it!" she cried out, putting the guitar at him so he should keep
his distance. "There! now you have broken it, songless Americano! You
shall buy me another." She flung the light instrument, that fell in a
corner with a loud complaint of all the strings together, collapsing to
a blurred hollow humming, and silence.

"Now you have done it!" said Genesmere, mock serious.

"I don't care. I am glad. He played on that to-day. He can have it, and
you shall give me a new one.

"'Yo soy purita mejicana;
Nada tengo espanol,'"

sang the excited, b