Coronado and Clara were Adam and Eve; they were the only man and woman in this paradise.  People thus situated are claimed by a being whom most call a goddess, and some a demon.  She is protean; she is at once an invariable formula and an individual caprice; she is a law governing the universal multitude, and a passion swaying the unit.  She seems to be under an impression that, where a couple are left alone together, they are the last relics of the human race, and that if they do not marry the type will perish.  Indifferent to all considerations but one, she pushes them toward each other.

There is comparative safety from her in a crowd.  Bachelors and maidens who mingle by hundreds may remain bachelors and maidens.  But pair them off in lonely places and see if the result is not amazingly hymeneal.  A fellow who has run the gauntlet of seven years of parties in New York will marry the first agreeable girl whom he meets in Alaska.  There is such a thing as leaving the haunts of men and repairing to waste places to find a husband.  We are told that English girls have reduced this to a system, and that fair archers who have failed at Brighton go out to hunt successfully in India.

Well, Coronado had the favoring chances of solitude, propinquity, and daily opportunity.  Seldom away from Clara for a day together, he was in condition to take advantage of any of those moods which lay woman open to courtship, such as gratitude for attentions, a disgust with loneliness, a desire for something to love.  It was a great thing for him that there was work about the hacienda which no woman could easily do; that there were men servants to govern, horses to be herded, valued, and sold, and lands to be cultivated.  All these male mysteries were soon handed over to Coronado, subject to the advice of Aunt Maria and the final judgment of Clara.  The result was that he and she got into a way of frequently discussing many things which threatened to habituate her to the idea of being at one with him through life.

Have you ever watched two specks floating in a vessel of water?  For a long time they approach each other so slowly that the movement is imperceptible but at last they are within range of each other’s magnetism; there is a start, a swift rush, and they are together.  Thus it was that Clara was gently, very gently, and unconsciously to herself, approaching Coronado.  A mote on the wave of life, she was subject to attraction, as all of us motes are, and this man was the only tractor at hand.  Aunt Maria did not count, for woman cannot absorb woman.  As to Thurstane, he not only was not there, but he was not anywhere, as she at last believed.

Not a word from him or about him, except one letter from the Adjutant-General, which somehow evaded Coronado’s brazier, gave her a moment of choking hope and fear, opened its white, official lips, acknowledged her “communication,” and stopped there.  The unseen tragedies in which souls suffer are numberless.  Here was one.  The girl had written with tears and heart-beats, and then with tears and heart-beats had waited.  At last came the words, “I have the honor to acknowledge, etc., very respectfully, etc.”  It was one of the business-like facts of life unknowingly trampling upon a bleeding sentiment.