ithin two months Carmen should be out of the
country."

"Surely. You and she--"

"Enough, friend. I do not go with her."

"What? _Caramba_!"

"Go now and bid Carmen come to me immediately after the _desayuno_.
Tell Dona Maria that I will eat nothing this morning. I am going up to
the old church on the hill."

Rosendo stared stupidly at the priest. But Jose turned abruptly and
started away, leaving the old man in a maze of bewilderment.

In the gloom of the old church Jose threw himself upon a bench near
the door, and waited torpidly. A few moments later came a voice, and
then the soft patter of bare feet in the thick dust without. Carmen
was talking as she approached. Jose rose in curiosity; but the girl
was alone. In her hand she held a scrubby flower that had drawn a
desperate nourishment from the barren soil at the roadside. She
glanced up at Jose and smiled.

"It is easy to understand their language, isn't it, Padre? They don't
speak as we do, but they reflect. And that is better than speaking.
They reflect God. They stand for His ideas in the human mind. And so
do you. And I. Aren't they wonderful, these flowers! But you know,
they are only the way we interpret certain of God's wonderful ideas.
Only, because we mortals believe in death, we see these beautiful
things at last reflecting our thought of death--don't we? We see only
our thoughts, after all. Everything we see about us is reflected
thought. First we see our thoughts of life and beauty and good. And
then our thoughts of decay and death.

"But God--He never sees anything but the good," she went on. "He sees
the real, not the supposition. And when we learn to see only as He
does, why, then we will never again see death. We will see ourselves
as we really are, immortal. God sees Himself that way. Jesus learned
to see that way, didn't he? His thought was finally so pure that he
saw nothing but good. And that gave him such power that he did those
things that the poor, ignorant, wrong-thinking people called miracles.
But they were only the things that you and I and everybody else ought
to be doing to-day--and would be doing, if we thought as he did,
instead of thinking of evil.

"But," she panted, as she sat down beside him, "I've talked a lot,
haven't I? And you sent for me because you wanted to talk. But,
remember," holding up an admonitory finger, "I shall not listen if you
talk anything but good. Oh, Padre dear," looking up wistfully into his
dr