“You believed I was a hawk and would seize you, eh?” he queried.  “Is that why you continue to shrink?  Well, let me tell you something, if my tongue will frame the thoughts in my mind.  My passion is so deep and so sacred that I would not be content with less than all of you.  Your lips would not satisfy mine unless they were hot with love, your kisses wet with desire.  I must have you all, and so I wait, trembling.  I say this so badly that I doubt if you understand.  Listen, then:  to possess you by force would be—­ well, as if I sacked a cathedral of its golden images and expected to gain heaven by clutching the Madonna in my arms.  Senora, in you I see the priceless jewel of my life, which I shall wear to dazzle the world, and without which I shall destroy myself.  Now let me tell you what I can offer you, what setting I can build for this treasure.  Marriage with Luis Longorio—­”

Alaire could not control a start.

As if quickened by his intensity, the man read her thought.  “You did not imagine that I offered you anything less?”

“What was I to think?  Your reputation—­”

“Mother of God!” breathed the general.  So!  That is what you meant a moment ago.  That is why you refuse my embraces.  No, no!  Other women have feared me and I have laughed in their hair as they tore at my arms, but you—­you will be my wife, and all Mexico shall bow at your feet.”  He checked her denial with a gesture.  “Wait until I tell you the vision I have seen during these days of my despair.  I see Mexico made whole by my hands; a land of peace and plenty; a people with one name upon their lips—­the name of Longorio the Deliverer; and you as the first lady of them all.  You know me for a man of tremendous ability in every line.  Well, I know myself, too.  I have measured myself carefully, and I have no weakness.  There is no other like me.  Pancho Gomez?  Bah!  He is a red-handed bandit of no culture.  Candeleria, his chief?  The idol of the ignorant and a dreamer of no force.  Potosi?  He is President today, but what of tomorrow?  Those who surround him are weaklings, and he stumbles toward oblivion.  Who will succeed him?  Who will issue from the coming struggle as the dominant figure of Mexico?  Who but that military genius who checks the Yankee hordes and saves the fatherland?  I am he.  Fate points the path of glory and I am her man of destiny.  You see, then, what I bring you—­power, position, riches.  Riches?  Caramba!  Wait until my hands are in the treasury.  I will load you with gold and jewels, and I will make you the richest woman in the world.  Senora, I offer you dominion.  I offer you the President’s palace and Chapultepec.  And with all that I offer you such passionate love as no woman of history ever possessed.

He paused, spent by the force of his own intensity; it was plain that he expected an immediate surrender.

Alaire’s lips parted in the faintest of mocking smiles.  “You have great confidence in yourself,” she said.