your way, but in mine. I tell you why. Because he has the power to compel me. If he hadn’t the power to compel me, how should I believe?”
“It is a queer sort of belief that is compelled,” she said.
“How else should one believe, except by being compelled? I like Ramón for that, that he can compel me. When I grew up, and my god-father could not compel me to believe, I was very unhappy. It made me very unhappy.—But Ramón compels me, and that is very good. It makes me very happy, when I know I can’t escape. It would make you happy too.”
“To know I could not escape from Don Ramón?” she said ironically.
“Yes, that also. And to know you could not escape from Mexico. And even from such a man, as me.”
She paused in the dark before she answered, sardonically:
“I don’t think it would make me happy to feel I couldn’t escape from Mexico. No, I feel, unless I was sure I could get out any day, I couldn’t bear to be here.”
In her mind she thought: And perhaps Ramón is the only one I couldn’t quite escape from, because he really touches me somewhere inside. But from you, you little Cipriano, I should have no need even to escape, because I could not be caught by you.
“Ah!” he said quickly. “You think so. But then you don’t know. You can only think with American thoughts. It is natural. From your education, you have only American thoughts, U.S.A. thoughts, to think with. Nearly all women are like that: even Mexican women of the Spanish-Mexican class. They are all thinking nothing but U.S.A. thoughts, because those are the ones that go with the way