Page:Life Amongst the Modocs.djvu/242

 wrongs.

She was surely lovelier now than ever before ; tall, and lithe, and graceful as a mountain lily swayed .by the breath of morning. On her face, through the tint of brown, lay the blush and flush of maidenhood, the indescribable sacred something that makes a maiden holy to every man of a manly and chivalrous nature ; that makes a man utterly unselfish, and per fectly content to love and be silent, to worship at a distance, as turning to the holy shrine of Mecca, to be still and bide his time ; caring not to possess in the low coarse way that characterizes your common love of to-day, but choosing rather to go to battle for her, bearing her in his heart through many lands, through storms and death, with only a word of hope, a smile, a wave of the hand from a wall, a kiss blown far, as he mounts his steed below and plunges into the night. That is a love to live for. I say the knights of Spain, bloody as they were, were a noble and a splendid type of men in their way.

The Prince was of this manner of men. He was by nature a knight of the chivalrous, grand old days of Spain, a hero born out of time, and blown out of place, in the mines and mountains of the North.

Once he had taken Paquita in his arms, had folded a robe around her as if she had been a babe. She was all everything to him. He renounced all this. Now he did not even touch her hand.

The old earnestness and perplexity had come upon the Prince again on our coming to the feast. Once,