And you will send Carmen to me at once? And bid her bring
her mother's locket. _Conque, hasta luego, amigo._"

He went to the door, and seeing his two negro _peones_ loitering near,
walked confidently and briskly to the house of Don Mario.

Jose, bewildered and benumbed, staggered into his sleeping room and
sank upon the bed.

* * * * *

"Padre--Padre dear."

Carmen stood beside the stricken priest, and her little hand crept
into his.

"I watched until I saw him go, and then I came in. He has bad
thoughts, hasn't he? But--Padre dear, what is it? Did he make you
think bad thoughts, too? He can't, you know, if you don't want to."

She bent over him and laid her cheek against his. Jose stared unseeing
up at the thatch roof.

"Padre dear, everything has a rule, a principle, you told me. Don't
you remember? But his thoughts haven't any principle, have they? Any
more than the mistakes I make in algebra. Aren't we glad we know
that!"

The child kissed the suffering man and wound her arms about his neck.

"Padre dear, he couldn't say anything that could make you unhappy--he
just couldn't! God is _everywhere_, and you are His child--and I am,
too--and--and there just isn't anything here but God, and we are in
Him. Why, Padre, we are in Him, just like the little fish in the lake!
Isn't it nice to know that--to really _know_ it?"

Aye, if he had really known it he would not now be stretched upon a
bed of torment. Yet, Carmen knew it. And his suffering was for her.
Was he not really yielding to the mesmerism of human events? Why, oh,
why could he not remain superior to them? Why continually rise and
fall, tossed through his brief years like a dry weed in the blast?

It was because he _would_ know evil, and yield to its mesmerism. His
enemies were not without, but within. How could he hope to be free
until he had passed from self-consciousness to the sole consciousness
of infinite good?

"Padre dear, his bad thoughts have only the minus sign, haven't
they?"

Yes, and Jose's now carried the same symbol of nothingness. Carmen was
linked to the omnipresent mind that is God; and no power, be it Diego
or his superior, Wenceslas, could effect a separation.

But if Carmen was Diego's child, she must go with him. Jose could no
longer endure this torturing thought. He rose from the bed and sought
Dona Maria.

"Senora," he pleaded, "tell me again what you know of Carmen's
parent