things for which the world so sorely strives.

And daily the little maid wrapped herself about his heart. Daily her
wondrous love coiled its soft folds tighter around him, squeezing from
his atrabilious soul, drop by drop, its sad taciturnity and inherent
morbidness, that it might later fill his empty life with a spiritual
richness which he had never known before.

On the day following the opening of the church Carmen had asked
many questions. It was the first religious service she had ever
voluntarily attended. To her former queries regarding the function
of the church edifice, Rosendo had vouchsafed but one reply: it was
the house of God, and in it the people used to gather to learn of Him.
But she protested that she had no need of the musty, ramshackle,
barn-like old building as a locus in which to center her thought upon
God. She walked with Him, and she much preferred the bright, sunlit
out-of-doors in which to commune with Him. Jose explained the need
of a central gathering place as a shelter from the hot sun. But the
images--the pictures of Saints and Virgin--and the Mass itself?

"They are what the people are accustomed to, dear child, to direct
their thought toward God," he explained. "And we will use them until
we can teach them something better." He had omitted from the church
service as far as possible the collects and all invocations addressed
to the Virgin and the Saints, and had rendered it short and extremely
simple. Carmen seemed satisfied with his explanation, and with his
insistence that, for the sake of appearance, she attend the Sunday
services. He would trust her God to guide them both.

The days sped by silently and swiftly. Jose and the child dwelt
together apart from the world, in a universe purely mental. As he
taught her, she hung upon his every word, and seized the proffered
tutelage with avidity. Often, after the day's work, Jose, in his
customary strolls about the little town, would come across the girl in
the doorway of a neighboring house, with a group of wide-eyed
youngsters about her, relating again the wonder-tales which she had
gathered from him. Marvelous tales they were, too, of knight and
_hidalgo_, of court and camp, of fairies, pyxies, gnomes and sprites,
of mossy legend and historic fact, bubbling from the girl's childish
lips with an engaging _naivete_ of interpretation that held the man
enchanted. Even the schoolmaster, who had besought Jose in vain to
turn Carmen over to