he depression of his primal environment, and
against its insidious suggestions of license, Carmen moved before him
like the shechinah of Israel, symbolizing the divine presence. When
the dark hours came and his pronounced egoism bade fair to overwhelm
him; when his self-centered thought clung with the tenacity of a
limpet to his dreary surroundings and his unfilled longings; when
self-condemnation and self-pity rived his soul, and despair of solving
life's intricate problems settled again like a pall upon him, he
turned to her. Under the soft influence of her instinct for primitive
good, he was learning, even if slowly, to jettison his heavily laden
soul, and day by day to ride the tossing waves of his stormy thought
with a lighter cargo. Her simple faith in immanent good was working
upon his mind like a spiritual catharsis, to purge it of its clogging
beliefs. Her unselfed love flowed over him like heavenly balm, salving
the bleeding wounds of the spiritual mayhem which he had suffered at
the violent hands of Holy Church's worldly agents.

Carmen's days were filled to the brim with a measure of joy that
constantly overflowed upon all among whom she moved. Her slight
dependence upon her impoverished material environment, her contempt
of its _ennui_, were constant reminders to Jose that heaven is but
a state of mind. Even in desolate Simiti, life to her was an
endless series of delightful experiences, of wonderful surprises
in the discovery of God's presence everywhere. Her enthusiasms were
always ardent and inexhaustible. Sparkling animation and abounding
vitality characterized her every movement. Her thought was free,
unstrained, natural, and untrammeled by those inherited and educated
beliefs in evil in which Jose had early been so completely swamped.
In worldly knowledge she was the purest novice; and the engaging
_naivete_ with which she met the priest's explanations of historical
events and the motives from which they sprang charmed him beyond
measure, and made his work with her a constant delight. Her sense of
humor was keen, and her merriment when his recitals touched her
risibility was extravagant. She laughed at danger, laughed at the
weaknesses and foibles of men, when he told of the political and
social ambitions which stirred mankind in the outside world. But he
knew that her merriment proceeded not from an ephemeral sense of
the ludicrous, but from a righteous appraisal of the folly and
littleness of those