"Will it matter to you? Are you strong enough? It will be only a question of time to win them over, if you are." She nodded emphatically. "I was born with strength. Now--Dios!--now I can be stronger than the King of Spain himself, than the Governor, my parents and all the priests-- You would not become a Catholic?" she asked abruptly. He shook his head, although he still smiled at her. "Not even for you." "No," she said thoughtfully. "I will confess--what matters it?--I often dreamed that this would come just because I believed it would not. But why should one control the imagination when it alone can give us happiness for a little while? I gave it rein, for I thought that one-half of my life was to be passed in that unreal but by no means niggardly world. And I thought of everything. To change your religion would mean the ruin of your career; moreover, it is not a possibility of your character. Were it I think I should not love you so much. Nor could I bear to think of any change in you. Only it will be harder--longer." Then she stretched out her hand, and closed and opened it slowly. The most obtuse could not have failed to read the old simile of the steel in the velvet. "I shall win because it is my nature--and my power--to hold what I grasp." "But if they persistently refuse--" "Dios!" she interrupted him. "Do you think that your love is greater than mine? I was born with a thousand years of love in me and had you not come I should have gone alone with my dreams to the grave. I am all women in one, not merely Concha Arguello, a girl of sixteen." She clasped her hands high above her head, lifting her eyes to the ashen vault so soon to yield to the gay brush of dawn. "Before all that great mystery," she said solemnly, "I give myself to you forever, how much or how little that may mean here on earth. Forever." XVI The Commandante of the San Francisco Company sat opposite Rezanov with his mouth open, the lines of his strong face elongated and relaxed. It was the hour of siesta, and they were alone in the sala. "Mother of God!" he exclaimed. "Mother of God! Are you mad, Excellency?" "No man was ever saner," said Rezanov cheerfully. "What better proof would you have than this final testimony to Dona Concha's perfections?" "But it cannot be! Surely, Excellency, you realize that? The priests! Ay yi! Ay yi!" "I think I understand the priests. Persuade the Governor to buy my cargo and they will look upon me as an amicus humani generis to whom common rules do not apply. And I have won their sincere friendship."