The Last of the Incas by Gustave Aimard — Read

It is rare for an extreme situation, when drawn to its utmost limits, to remain long in a state of tension; hence it is not surprising that Nocobotha, after advancing so far in his confiding love, should recoil terrified at the progress he had made. Man is so constituted that too much happiness embarrasses and alarms him, and it is, perhaps, a foreboding that this happiness will be of short duration. The Indian chief, whose heart overflowed like a brimming cup, felt a vague doubt mingle with his joy and obscure it with a cloud. Still, it is pleasant to flatter one's self, and the young man yielded to this new intoxication and the pleasures of hope. These smiles, these looks, everything reassured him. Why had she come to him through so many dangers? She loves me, he thought, and love intensified the bandage which Dona Concha had fastened over his eyes with so much grace and perfidy.

Men of lofty intellect are nearly all unconsciously affected by a weakness that frequently causes their ruin, the more so because they believe nobody clever enough to cheat them. Had Nocobotha nothing to fear from this girl of fifteen, who avowed her love with such simplicity? But as his mind was, so to speak, turned away from real life to be absorbed in a single dream -- the independence of his country -- Nocobotha had never essayed to read that enigmatical book called a woman's heart; he was ignorant that a woman, especially an American woman, never forgives an insult offered to her lover, for he is her deity and is inviolable.