stranger in a strange land, and though my home was there and my children
were about me, the longing for my other home was yet with me, and I
could not put away the memory of that Lily whom I had lost. Her ring was
still upon my hand, but nothing else of her remained to me. I did not
know if she were married or single, living or dead. The gulf between us
widened with the widening years, but still the thought of her went
with me like my shadow; it shone across the stormy love of Otomie, I
remembered it even in my children's kiss. And worst of all I despised
myself for these regrets. Nay, if the worst can have a worse, there was
one here, for though she never spoke of it, I feared that Otomie had
read my mind.

Heart to heart, Though far apart,

so ran the writing upon Lily's betrothal ring, and so it was with me.
Far apart we were indeed, so far that no bridge that I might imagine
could join that distance, and yet I could not say that we had ceased
from being 'heart to heart.' Her heart might throb no more, but mine
beat still toward it. Across the land, across the sea, across the gulf
of death--if she were dead--still in secret must I desire the love that
I had forsworn.

And so the years rolled on, bringing little of change with them, till
I grew sure that here in this far place I should live and die. But that
was not to be my fate.

If any should read this, the story of my early life, he will remember
that the tale of the death of a certain Isabella de Siguenza is pieced
into its motley. He will remember how this Isabella, in the last moments
of her life, called down a curse upon that holy father who added outrage
and insult to her torment, praying that he might also die by the hands
of fanatics and in a worse fashion. If my memory does not play me false,
I have said that this indeed came to pass, and very strangely. For after
the conquest of Anahuac by Cortes, among others this same fiery priest
came from Spain to turn the Indians to the love of God by torment and by
sword. Indeed, of all of those who entered on this mission of peace, he
was the most zealous. The Indian pabas wrought cruelties enough when,
tearing out the victim's heart, they offered it like incense to Huitzel
or to Quetzal, but they at least dismissed his soul to the Mansions of
the Sun. With the Christian priests the thumb-screw and the stake took
the place of the stone of sacrifice, but the soul which they delivered
from its earthly bon