A sudden impulse seized the girl. She stopped and gathered the sick man into her young, strong arms. "Don't be silly," she cried. "My world is your world, Esteban dear. I'll never, never leave you."
"Miss Evans! NORINE!" Varona tried feebly to free himself. "You mustn't--"
Norine was laughing through her tears. "If you won't speak, I suppose I must, but it is very embarrassing. Don't you suppose I know exactly how much you love me? "Why, you've told me a thousand times--"
"Please! PLEASE!" he cried in a shaking voice. "This is wrong. I won't let you--you, a girl with everything--"
"Hush!" She drew him closer. "You're going to tell me that you have nothing, can offer me nothing. You're going to do the generous, noble thing. Well! I hate generous people. I'm selfish, utterly selfish and spoiled, and I don't propose to be robbed of anything I want, least of all my happiness. You do love me, don't you?"
Esteban's cry was eloquent; he clasped his arms about her and she held him fiercely to her breast.
"Well, then, why don't you tell me so? I--I can't keep on proposing. It isn't ladylike."
"We're quite mad, quite insane," he told her after a while. "This only makes it harder to give you up."
"You're not going to give me up and you're not going to die. I sha'n't let you. Think what you have to live for."
"I--did wrong to surrender."
"It was I who surrendered. Come! Must I say it all? Aren't you going to ask me--"
"What?"
"Why, to marry you, of course."
Esteban gasped; he looked deeply into Norine's eyes, then he closed his own. He shook his head. "Not that," he whispered. "Oh, not that!"
"We're going to be married, and I'm going to take you out of this miserable place."
"What happiness!" he murmured. "If I were well--But I won't let you marry a dying man."
Norine rose, her face aglow with new strength, new determination. She dried her eyes and readjusted her hair with deft, unconscious touch, smiling down, meanwhile, at the man. "I brought you back when you were all but gone. I saved you after the others had given you up, and now you are mine to do with as I please. You belong to me and I sha'n't consult you--" She turned, for a figure had darkened the door; it was one of her English-speaking convalescents who was acting as a sort of orderly.
"Senorita," the man said, with a flash of white teeth, "we have another sick man, and you'd never guess who. It is that American, El Demonio--"