"I must not allow anything you say in future to spoil
my gratitude. Do you know I think you are one of those who like to
laugh at most things, senor--no, let me call you Richard, and you shall
call me Dolores, for we must remain friends always. Let us make a
compact, then it will be impossible for us to quarrel. You shall be
free to doubt, question, laugh at everything, except one thing only--my
faith in Santa Coloma."
"Yes, I will gladly make that agreement," I replied. "It will be a new
kind of paradise, and of the fruit of every tree I may eat except of
this tree only."
She laughed gaily.
"I will now leave you," she said. "You are suffering pain, and are
very tired. Perhaps you will be able to sleep." While speaking she
brought a second cushion for my head, then left me, and before long
I fell into a refreshing doze.
I spent three days of enforced idleness at the Casa Blanca, as the
house was called, before Santa Coloma returned, and after the rough
experience I had undergone, during which I had subsisted on a flesh
diet untempered by bread or vegetables, they were indeed like days
spent in paradise to me. Then the General came back. I was sitting
alone in the garden when he arrived, and, coming out to me, he greeted
me warmly.
"I greatly feared from my previous experience of your impatience under
restraint that you might have left us," he said kindly.
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