ing along peacefully with its banks carpeted by fragrant
flowers and its bed covered with fine sand, so that the wind hardly
ruffled its current as it moved along, seeming hardly to flow at all;
but suddenly its bed becomes narrower, sharp stones block the way,
hoary logs fall across it forming a barrier--then the stream rises
and roars with its waves boiling and scattering clouds of foam,
it beats against the rocks and rushes into the abyss!

She wanted to pray, but who in despair can pray? Prayers are for the
hours of hope, and when in the absence of this we turn to God it is
only with complaints. "My God," cried her heart, "why dost Thou thus
cut a man off, why dost Thou deny him the love of others? Thou dost
not deny him thy sunlight and thy air nor hide from him the sight of
thy heaven! Why then deny him love, for without a sight of the sky,
without air or sunlight, one can live, but without love--never!"

Would these cries unheard by men reach the throne of God or be heard
by the Mother of the distressed? The poor maiden who had never known
a mother dared to confide these sorrows of an earthly love to that
pure heart that knew only the love of daughter and of mother. In
her despair she turned to that deified image of womanhood, the most
beautiful idealization of the most ideal of all creatures, to that
poetical creation of Christianity who unites in herself the two most
beautiful phases of womanhood without its sorrows: those of virgin
and mother,--to her whom we call Mary!

"Mother, mother!" she moaned.

Aunt Isabel came to tear her away from her sorrow since she was being
asked for by some friends and by the Captain-General, who wished to
talk with her.

"Aunt, tell them that I'm ill," begged the frightened girl. "They're
going to make me play on the piano and sing."

"Your father has promised. Are you going to put your father in a
bad light?"

Maria Clara rose, looked at her aunt, and threw back her shapely arms,
murmuring, "Oh, if I only had--"

But without concluding the phrase she began to make herself ready
for presentation.

CHAPTER XXXVII

His Excellency

"I Want to talk with that young man," said his Excellency to an
aide. "He has aroused all my interest."

"They have already gone to look for him, General. But here is a young
man from Manila who insists on being introduced. We told him that
your Excellency had no time for interviews, that you had not come
to give audiences, but t