in Mexico, as he is trying—” she said slowly.
“He is in Mexico. He tries here. Why should not you?”
“I?”
“Yes! You! Ramón doesn’t believe in womanless gods, he says. Why should you not be the woman in the Quetzalcoatl pantheon? If you will, the goddess!”
“I, a goddess in the Mexican pantheon?” cried Kate, with a burst of startled laughter.
“Why not?” said he.
“But I am not Mexican,” said she.
“You may easily be a goddess,” said he, “in the same pantheon with Don Ramón and me.”
A strange, inscrutable flame of desire seemed to be burning on Cipriano’s face, as his eyes watched her glittering. Kate could not help feeling that it was a sort of intense, blind ambition, of which she was partly an object: a passionate object also: which kindled the