'All these years you had been true to me and I had borne you children
whom you loved; but you loved them for their own sake, not for mine,
indeed, at heart you hated the Indian blood that was mixed in their
veins with yours. Me also you loved in a certain fashion and this half
love of yours drove me well nigh mad; such as it was, it died when you
saw me distraught and celebrating the rites of my forefathers on the
teocalli yonder, and you knew me for what I am, a savage. And now the
children who linked us together are dead--one by one they died in this
way and in that, for the curse which follows my blood descended upon
them--and your love for me is dead with them. I alone remain alive, a
monument of past days, and I die also.
'Nay, be silent; listen to me, for my time is short. When you bade me
call you "husband" no longer, then I knew that it was finished. I obey
you, I put you from me, you are no more my husband, and soon I shall
cease to be your wife; still, Teule, I pray you listen to me. Now it
seems to you in your sorrow, that your days are done and that there is
no happiness left for you. This is not so. You are still but a man in
the beginning of middle age, and you are yet strong. You will escape
from this ruined land, and when you shake the dust of it off your feet
its curse shall fall from you; you will return to your own place, and
there you will find one who has awaited your coming for many years.
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