in the city, I had surely saved you, for a woman’s thought leaps far, and can find a path where none seems possible.  But this war has changed everything, and moreover the star-readers and diviners of auguries have given a prophecy which seals your fate.  For they have prophesied that if your blood flows, and your heart is offered at the hour of noon to-morrow on the altar of Tezcat, our people shall be victorious over the Teules, and utterly destroy them.  But if the sacrifice is celebrated one moment before or after that propitious hour, then the doom of Tenoctitlan is sealed.  Also they have declared that you must die, not, according to custom, at the Temple of Arms across the lake, but on the great pyramid before the chief statue of the god.  All this is known throughout the land; thousands of priests are now offering up prayers that the sacrifice may be fortunate, and a golden ring has been hung over the stone of slaughter in such a fashion that the light of the sun must strike upon the centre of your breast at the very moment of mid-day.  For weeks you have been watched as a jaguar watches its prey, for it was feared that you would escape to the Teules, and we, your wives, have been watched also.  At this moment there is a triple ring of guards about the palace, and priests are set without your doors and beneath the window places.  Judge, then, what chance there is of escape, Teule.’

‘Little indeed,’ I said, ’and yet I know a road.  If I kill myself, they cannot kill me.’

‘Nay,’ she answered hastily, ’what shall that avail you?  While you live you may hope, but once dead, you are dead for ever.  Also if you must die, it is best that you should die by the hand of the priest.  Believe me, though the end is horrible,’ and she shuddered, ’it is almost painless, so they say, and very swift.  They will not torture you, that we have saved you, Guatemoc and I, though at first they wished thus to honour the god more particularly on this great day.’

‘O Teule,’ Otomie went on, seating herself by me on the bed, and taking my hand, ’think no more of these brief terrors, but look beyond them.  Is it so hard a thing to die, and swiftly?  We all must die, to-day, or to-night, or the next day, it matters little when—­and your faith, like ours, teaches that beyond the grave is endless blessedness.  Think then, my friend, to-morrow you will have passed far from this strife and turmoil; the struggle and the sorrows and the daily fears for the future that make the soul sick will be over for you, you will be taken to your peace, where no one shall disturb you for ever.  There you will find that mother whom you have told me of, and who loved you, and there perhaps one will join you who loves you better than your mother, mayhap even I may meet you there, friend,’ and she looked up at me strangely.  ’The road that you are doomed to walk is dark indeed, but surely it must be well-trodden, and there is light shining beyond it.  So be a man, my friend, and do not grieve; rejoice rather that at so early an age you have done with woes and doubts, and come to the gates of joy, that you have passed the thorny, unwatered wilderness and see the smiling lakes and gardens, and among them the temples of your eternal city.