me!” he said, and he pressed his hand against the buttons of his tunic. “To me Ramón is more than life. More than life.” His eyes seemed to glare and go sightless, as he said it, the ferocity melting in a strange blind, confiding glare, that seemed sightless, either looking inward, or out at the whole vast void of the cosmos, where no vision is left.
“More than anything?” she said.
“Yes!” he replied abstractedly, with a blind nod of the head.
Then abruptly he looked at her and said:
“You saved his life.”
By this he meant that therefore—But she could not understand the therefore.
She went to change, and they set off to Jamiltepec. Cipriano made her a little uneasy, sitting beside him. He made her physically aware of him, of his small but strong and assertive body, with its black currents and storms of desire. The range of him was very limited, really. The great part of his nature was just inert and heavy, unresponsive, limited as a snake or a lizard is limited. But within his own heavy, dark range he had a curious power. Almost she could see the black fume of power which he emitted, the dark, heavy vibration of his blood, which cast a spell over her.
As they sat side by side in the motor-car, silent, swaying to the broken road, she could feel the curious tingling heat of his blood, and the heavy power of the will that lay unemerged in his blood. She could see again the skies go dark, and the phallic mystery rearing itself like a whirling dark cloud, to the zenith, till it pierced the sombre, twilit zenith; the