for she was really busy with thoughts of her dead Carvillho Gonzales; but
for the moment he could only see the point of an argument.

She made a gesture of despair. "So--that's it. Habit in us is so
strong. It comes through the veins of our mothers to us. We say that
God is a lie one minute, and then the next minute we say, 'God guard
you!' Always--always calling to something, for something outside
ourselves. That is why I said Santa Maria, why I ask her to pray for the
soul of my friend, to pray to the God that breaks me and mine, and sends
us over the seas, beggars without a home."

Now she had him back out of the vanities of his philosophy. He was up,
inflamed, looking at her with an excitement on which she depended for her
future. She knew the caution of his nature, she realized how he would
take one step forward and another step back, and maybe get nowhere in the
end, and she wanted him--for a home, for her father's sake, for what he
could do for them both. She had no compunctions. She thought herself
too good for him, in a way, for in her day men of place and mark had
taken notice of her; and if it had not been for her Gonzales she would no
doubt have listened to one of them sometime or another. She knew she had
ability, even though she was indolent, and she thought she could do as
much for him as any other girl. If she gave him a handsome wife and
handsome children, and made men envious of him, and filled him with good
things, for she could cook more than tortillas-she felt he would have no
right to complain. She meant him to marry her--and Quebec was very near!

"A beggar in a strange land, without a home, without a friend--oh, my
broken life!" she whispered wistfully to the sunset.

It was not all acting, for the past reached out and swept over her,