d thrice striking her
breast.

"I take back every word I said. I do not hate him. I would not hurt
him--I would not even stick a pin in him--if I had him at my mercy.
No--I would do anything I could to help him. I would give him anything I
had that he could want. I would give him my coral rosary. I would give
him"--she hesitated, struggled, and at last, drawing a deep breath,
gritting her teeth, in supreme renunciation--"yes, I would give him my
tame kid," she forced herself to pronounce, with a kind of desperate
firmness. "But see," she wailed, her little white brow a mesh of painful
wrinkles, "it is all no good. God is still angry. Oh, what shall I do?"
And, to the surprise and distress of Maria Dolores, she burst into a
sudden passion of tears, sobbing, sobbing, with that abandonment of
grief which only children know.

"My dear, my dear," exclaimed Maria Dolores, drawing her to her. "My
dearest, you mustn't cry like that. Dear little Annunziata. What is it?
Why do you cry so, dear one? Answer me. Tell me."

But Annunziata only buried her face in Maria Dolores' sleeve, and
moaned, while long, tremulous convulsions shook her frail little body.
Maria Dolores put both arms about her, hugged her close, and laid her
cheek upon her hair.

"Darling Annunziata, don't cry. Why should you cry so, dearest? God is
not angry with you. Why should you think that God is angry with you? God
loves you, darling. Everyone loves you. There, there--dearest--don't
cry. Sweet one, dear one."

Transitions, with Annunziata, were sometimes inexplicably rapid. All at
once her sobbing ceased; she looked up, and smiled, smiled radiantly,
from a face that was wet and glistening with tears. "Thanks be to God,"
she piously exulted; "God is not angry any more."

"Of course He isn't," said Maria Dolores, tightening her hug, and
touching Annunziata's curls lightly with her lips. "But He was never
angry. What made you think that God was angry?"

Annunziata's big eyes widened. "Didn't you notice?" she asked, in a
hushed voice, amazed.

"No," wondered Maria Dolores. "What was there to notice?"

"He made them draw a cloud over the sun," Annunziata whispered. "Didn't
you notice that when I said I would like to--when I said what I said
about that friend of Prospero's--just then they drew a cloud across the
sun? That is a sign that God is angry. The sun, you know, is the window
in Heaven through which God looks down on the world, and through which