“My brother,” said Kari in that soft even voice of his, when he had heard me patiently to the end, “forgive me if I tell you that in advancing this prayer, for one word you say on behalf of King Huaracha, you say two for yourself, who having unhappily been bewitched by her, desire this Virgin of the Sun, the lady Quilla, to be your wife.  My brother, take everything else that I have to give, but leave this lady alone.  If I handed her over to Huaracha or to you, as I have told you before, I should bring upon myself and upon my people the curse of my father the Sun, and of Pachacamac, the Spirit who is above the Sun.  It was because Upanqui, my father according to the flesh, dared to look upon her after she had entered the House of the Sun, as I have learned he did, that a bloody and a cruel death came upon him, for so the magicians and the wise men have assured me that the oracles declare.  Therefore, rather than do this crime of crimes, I would choose that Huaracha should renew the war against us and that you should join yourself to him, or even to Urco, and strive to tear me from the Throne, for then even if I were slain, I should die with honour.”

“That I could never do,” I answered sadly.

“No, my brother Hubert (for now he called me by my English name again), that you could never do, being what you are, as I know well.  So like the rest of us you must bear your burden.  Mayhap it may please my gods, or your gods in the end, and in some way that I cannot foresee, to give you this woman whom you seek.  But of my free will I will never give her to you.  To me the deed would be as though in your land of England the King commanded the consecrated bread and cups of wine to be snatched from the hands of the priests of your temples and cast to the dogs, or given to cheer the infidels within your gates, or dragged away the nuns from your convents to become their lemans.  What would you think of such a king in your own country?  And what,” he added with meaning, “would you have thought of me if there I had stolen one of these nuns because she was beautiful and I desired her as a wife?”

Now although Kari’s words stung me because of the truth that was in them, I answered that to me this matter wore another face.  Also that Quilla had become a Virgin of the Sun, not of her own free will, but to escape from Urco.

“Yes, my brother,” he answered, “because you believe my religion to be idolatry, and do not understand that the Sun to me is the symbol and garment of God, and that when we of the Inca blood, or those of us who have the inner knowledge, talk of him as our Father, we mean that we are the children of God, though the common people are taught otherwise.  For the rest, this lady took her vows of her own free will and of her secret reasons I know nothing, any more than I know why she offered herself in marriage to Urco before she found you upon the island.  For you I grieve, and for her also; yet I would have you remember that, as your own priests teach, in every life that is not brutal there must be loss, sorrow, and sacrifice, since by these steps only man can climb towards the things of the spirit.  Pluck then such flowers as you will from the garden that Fate gives you, but leave this one white bloom alone.”