uppose. We think we're climbing a long hill, and that we'll
get to the top after a while. But at sundown the gate is opened and the
oxen are released. They've never really gotten anywhere."

He turned to her with the stanch optimism she had grown accustomed to in
him. "A pagan doctrine, that," he said spiritedly.

"A pagan doctrine.... I wonder what that means."

"Pagans are people who don't believe in God. I am not speaking of the God
of the churches, exactly. I mean a good influence."

"Don't they believe in their own gods?"

"No doubt. But you might call their own gods bad influences, as often as
not."

"Ah--perhaps they're just simple folk who believe in their own
experiences."

He had the troubled feeling that her intuitions, her fatalistic leanings,
were giving her a surer grasp of the subject than his, which was based
upon a rather nebulous, logical process that often brought him to
confusion.

"I only know that I am free," he declared doggedly.

The sun had warmed her to an almost vagrant mood. Her smile was delicate
enough, yet her eyes held a gentle taunt as she responded: "Not a bit of
it; you have a wife."

"A wife--yes; and that gives me ten times the freedom I ever had before. A
man is like a bird with only one wing--before he finds a wife. His wife
becomes his other wing. There isn't any height beyond him, when he has a
wife."

She placed her hands on her cheeks. "Two wings!" she mused.... "What's
between the wings?"

"A heart, you may say, if you will. Or a soul. A capacity. Words are
fashioned by scholars--dull fellows. But you know what I mean."

From the hidden depths of the _cuartel_ a silver bugle-note sounded, and
Sylvia looked to see if the soldiers sitting out in front would go away;
but they did not do so. She arose. "Would you mind going into the church a
minute?" she asked.

"No; but why?"

"Oh, anybody can go into those churches," she responded.

"Anybody can go into _any_ church."

"Yes, I suppose so. What I mean is that these old Catholic churches seem
different. In our own churches you have a feeling of being--what do you
say?--personally conducted. As if you were a visitor being shown
children's trinkets. There is something impersonal--something
boundless--in churches like this one here. The silence makes you think
that there is nobody in them--or that perhaps ... God isn't far away."

He frowned. "But this is just where the trinkets are--in these churches:
the ima