‘You are timid as a girl who will not utter the love she burns to tell,’ Otomie answered with a proud and bitter laugh.  ’Well, I will speak it for you.  It is in your mind that we must die to-night.’

‘It is,’ I said; ’death now, or shame and agony to-morrow and then death at last, that is our choice.  Since God will not protect us, we must protect ourselves if we can find the means.’

’God! there is no God.  At times I have doubted the gods of my people and turned to yours; now I renounce and reject Him.  If there were a God of mercy such as you cling to, could He suffer that such things be?  You are my god, husband, to you and for you I pray, and you alone.  Let us have done now with pleading to those who are not, or who, if they live, are deaf to our cries and blind to our misery, and befriend ourselves.  Yonder lies rope, that window has bars, very soon we can be beyond the sun and the cruelty of Teules, or sound asleep.  But there is time yet; let us talk a while, they will scarcely begin their torments before the dawn, and ere dawn we shall be far.’

So we talked as well as my sufferings would allow.  We talked of how we first had met, of how Otomie had been vowed to me as the wife of Tezcat, Soul of the World, of that day when we had lain side by side upon the stone of sacrifice, of our true marriage thereafter, of the siege of Tenoctitlan and the death of our first-born.  Thus we talked till midnight was two hours gone.  Then there came a silence.

‘Husband,’ said Otomie at last in a hushed and solemn voice, ’you are worn with suffering, and I am weary.  It is time to do that which must be done.  Sad is our fate, but at least rest is before us.  I thank you, husband, for your gentleness, I thank you more for your faithfulness to my house and people.  Shall I make ready for our last journey?’

‘Make ready!’ I answered.

Then she rose and soon was busy with the ropes.  At length all was prepared and the moment of death was at hand.

‘You must aid me, Otomie,’ I said; ‘I cannot walk by myself.’

She came and lifted me with her strong and tender arms, till I stood upon a stool beneath the window bars.  There she placed the rope about my throat, then taking her stand by me she fitted the second rope upon her own.  Now we kissed in solemn silence, for there was nothing more to say.  Yet Otomie said something, asking: 

’Of whom do you think in this moment, husband?  Of me and of my dead child, or of that lady who lives far across the sea?  Nay, I will not ask.  I have been happy in my love, it is enough.  Now love and life must end together, and it is well for me, but for you I grieve.  Say, shall I thrust away the stool?’

’Yes, Otomie, since there is no hope but death.  I cannot break my faith with Guatemoc, nor can I live to see you shamed and tortured.’

‘Then kiss me first and for the last time.’

We kissed again and then, as she was in the very act of pushing the stool from beneath us, the door opened and shut, and a veiled woman stood before us, bearing a torch in one hand and a bundle in the other.  She looked, and seeing us and our dreadful purpose, ran to us.