er? That the woman had sacrificed
herself for the girl? No; but that they had seized this opportunity to
send her, under the protection of Captain Morales, to the Sisters of
the Convent of Our Lady. The old man knew that the girl would see only
God's hand in the event.

Jose as in a dream sought Carmen. It seemed to him that once his arms
closed about her no power under the skies could tear them asunder. He
found her sitting in the doorway at the rear of Rosendo's house,
looking dreamily out over the placid lake. Cucumbra, now old and
feeble, slept at her feet. As the man approached he heard her murmur
repeatedly, "It is not true--it is not true--it is not true!"

"Carmen!" cried Jose, seizing her hand. "Come with me!"

She rose quickly. "Gladly, Padre--but where?"

"God only knows--to the end of the world!" cried the frenzied man.

"Well, Padre dear," she softly replied, as she smiled up into his
drawn face, "we will start out. But I think we had better rest when we
reach the shales, don't you?"

Then she put her hand in his.

CHAPTER 35

"No, Padre dear," with an energetic shake of her head, "no. Not even
after all that has seemed to happen to us do I believe it true. No, I
do not believe it real. Evil is not power. It does not exist,
excepting in the human mind. And that, as you yourself know, can not
be real, for it is all that God is not."

They were seated beneath the slowly withering _algarroba_ tree out on
the burning shales. Jose still held the girl's hand tightly in his.
Again he was struggling with self, struggling to pass the borderline
from, self-consciousness to God-consciousness; striving, under the
spiritual influence of this girl, to break the mesmeric hold of his
own mortal beliefs, and swing freely out into his true orbit about the
central Sun, infinite Mind.

The young girl, burgeoning into a marvelous womanhood, sat before him
like an embodied spirit. Her beauty of soul shone out in gorgeous
luxuriance, and seemed to him to envelop her in a sheen of radiance.
The brilliant sunshine glanced sparkling from her glossy hair into a
nimbus of light about her head. Her rich complexion was but faintly
suggestive to him of a Latin origin. Her oval face and regular
features might have indicated any of the ruddier branches of the
so-called Aryan stock. But his thought was not dwelling on these
things now. It was brooding over the events of the past few weeks, and
their probable consequence