"No, Lord, I shall be very unhappy. But what does it matter? I am only a woman, and such is the lot of women."
"Women, like gods and men, are also sometimes loved and adored, Quilla."
"Ah! if that were so life might be different. But even if it were so and I found the man who could love and adore even for a year, for me it is now too late. I am sworn away by an oath that may not be broken, for to break it might bring death upon my people."
"To the Child of the Sun, no less a man; to the god who will be Inca of all this land."
"They say that he is huge and swarthy, with a large mouth, and I know that he has the heart of a brute. He is cruel and false also, and he counts his women by the score. Yet his father, the Inca, loves him more than any of his children, and ere long he will be king after him."
"And would you, who are sweet and lovely as the moon after which you are named, give yourself body and soul to such a one?"
"Do my own ears hear the White-God-from-the-Sea call me sweet and lovely as the moon? If so, I thank him, and pray him to remember that the perfect and lovely are always chosen to be the sacrifice of gods."
"But, Quilla, the sacrifice may be all in vain. How long will you hold the fancy of this loose-living prince?"
"Long enough to serve my purpose, Lord--or, at least," she added with flashing eyes, "long enough to kill him if he will not go my country's road. Oh! ask me no more, for your words stir something in my breast, a new spirit of which I never dreamed. Had I heard them but three moons gone, it might have been otherwise. Why did you not appear sooner from the sea, my lord Hurachi, be you god or man?"
Then, with something like a sob, she rose, made obeisance, and fled away.
That evening, when we were alone in my chamber where none could hear us, I told Kari that Quilla was promised in marriage to a prince who would be Inca of all the land.
"Is it so?" said Kari. "Well, learn, Master, that this prince is my brother, he whom I hate, he who has done me bitter wrong, he who stole away my wife and poisoned me. Urco is his name. Does this lady Quilla love him?"
"I think not. I think that like you she hates him, yet will marry him for reasons of policy."
"Doubtless she hates him now, whatever she did a week ago," said Kari in a dry voice. "But what fruit will this tree bear? Master, are you minded to come with me to-morrow to visit the temple of Pachacamac in the inner sanctuary of which sits the god Rimac who speaks oracles?"