What would be a casual speech on the tongue of another becomes significant, when he has given one of his original twists to it.  I think, too, that in utter disregard of Italian etiquette he has sometimes walked on the street with this girl for a few steps.  He is like a child in some ways,—­as trusting and unconventional,—­and he wants to be friends with everybody.  I can’t tell whether it is because he is such an aristocrat that it doesn’t occur to him that any one can suspect him of losing caste, or because he is such a democrat that he doesn’t know it exists.

“However that may be, the girl is in love with him.  These Italian girls are modest and well-behaved ordinarily, but when once their imagination is aroused they are like flaming meteors.  They have no shame because they can’t see why any one should be ashamed of love (and, to tell the truth, I can’t either).  But this girl believes Karl has encouraged her.  I suppose she honestly believed that he was sweethearting.  He is astounded and dismayed.  At first both he and I thought she would get over it, but she has twice been barely prevented from killing herself.  Of course her countrymen think her desperately ill-treated.  She is the handsomest girl in the settlement, and she has a number of ardent admirers.  To the hatred which they have come to bear Karl as members of a strike directed against him, they now add the element of personal jealousy.

“So you see what kind of a Christmas we are having!  I have had Mrs. Hays take the babies to Colorado Springs, and if anything happens to us here, I’ll trust to you to see to them.  You, who mean to look after little children, look after mine above all others, for their mother gave you, long since, her loving friendship.  I would rather have you mother my babies, maiden though you are, than any woman I know, for I feel a great force in you, Kate, and believe you are going on until you get an answer to some of the questions which the rest of us have found unanswerable.

“Karl wants me to leave, for there is danger that the ranch house may be blown up almost any time.  These men play with dynamite as if it were wood, anyway, and they make fiery enemies.  Every act of ours is spied upon.  Our servants have left us, and Karl and I, obstinate as mules and as proud as sheiks, after the fashion of our family, hold the fort.  He wants me to go, but I tell him I am more interested in life than I ever dared hope I would be again.  I have been bayoneted into a fighting mood, and I find it magnificent to really feel alive again, after crawling in the dust so long, with the taste of it in my mouth.  So don’t pity me.  As for Karl—­he looks wild and strange, like the Flying Dutchman with his spectral hand on the helm.  But I don’t know that I want you to pity him either.  He is a curious man, with a passionate soul, and if he flares out like a torch in the wind, it will be fitting enough.  No, don’t pity us.  Congratulate us rather.”