“Oh, I am sorry. It will be dreary without you. And I thought it so enchanting here. Can’t I induce you to change your mind?” Catalina sat down on her trunk, but she shook her head. “I want to go home,” she said. Mrs. Rothe turned her kind, bitter eyes full upon Catalina. “Don’t run away,” she said. “It is unworthy of you. And this means nothing. What is more natural—he being a man—than that he should accept the minor offerings of the gods when the best is not forthcoming? Moreover, when a man has talked steadily to one girl for three weeks”—she shrugged her shoulders—“that is the way they are made, my dear, the way we are all made, for that matter, as you will discover in time for yourself. It is better to accept men as they are, and early than late.” “I never want to see another man again—and this was our first night in Granada. There was—had been for weeks—a tacit understanding that we should do every bit of it together—” “But you disappeared. No doubt he thought you were indisposed—” “I wanted him to come after me, for once.” “Oh, my dear, men are so dense. When they love us desperately they rarely do what we most long to have them. If I don’t sympathize with you—well, I think of my own throes, not only at your age, but so often after. It is so easy to fall in love, so difficult to remain there. You can marry Over if you wish—and two or three years hence—the pity of it!” “Do you mean that no love lasts?” “In tenacious natures like yours it may. Nevertheless, there will be times when he will bore you, get on your nerves, when you will plan to get away from him for a time. A few years ago I still clung—in the face of experience—to my delusions. Then I would have held your hand and wept sympathetic tears. Now, I can only say, go in and win, but don’t break your heart over an imagined capacity for love at an interminable high pitch.” “You must have loved Mr. Rothe when you married him,” said Catalina, with curiosity, and feeling that Mrs. Rothe had opened the gates and bade her enter.