initely melancholy reverberation. Within the Protestant
Church the choir of virgins was beginning a new hymn, like a flock of
joyous birds winging about the organ. Afar, gradually becoming fainter
and fainter and losing itself in the streets that were covered by the
shadows of night, sounded the thunder of the patrol and the playful
lisping of the fifes, hymning the universal power of England to the tune
of circus music.

"Your God! Your people!" exclaimed the Spaniard sadly. "Here, where
there are so many Gods! Here, where everybody is of your people!...
Forget all that. We are all equals in life. There is only one truth:
Love."

"Ding, dong!" groaned the bell aloft in the Catholic Cathedral, weeping
the death of day. "Lead Kindly Light!" sang the voices of the virgins
and the children in the Protestant temple, resounding through the
twilight silence of the square.

"No," answered Luna harshly, with an expression that Aguirre had never
seen in her before; she seemed to be another woman. "No. You have a
land, you have a nation, and you may well laugh at races and religions,
placing love above them. We, on the other hand, wherever we may be born,
and however much the laws may proclaim us the equals of others, are
always called Jews, and Jews we must remain, whether we will or no. Our
land, our nation, our only banner, is the religion of our ancestors. And
you ask me to desert it,--to abandon my people?... Sheer madness!"

Aguirre listened to her in amazement.

"Luna, I don't recognize you.... Luna, Lunita, you are another woman
altogether.... Do you know what I'm thinking of at this moment? I'm
thinking of your mother, whom I did not know."

He recalled those nights of cruel uncertainty, when Luna's mother tore
her jet-black hair before the bed in which her child lay gasping; how
she tried to deceive the demon, the hated _Huerco_, who came to rob her
of her beloved daughter.

"Ah! I, too, Luna, feel the simple faith of your mother,--her innocent
credulity. Love and despair simplify our souls and remove from them the
proud tinsel with which we clothe them in moments of happiness and
pride; love and despair render us by their mystery, timid and
respectful, like the simplest of creatures. I feel what your poor mother
felt during those nights. I shudder at the presence of the _Huerco_ in
our midst. Perhaps it's that old fellow with the goat's whiskers who is
at the head of your people here; all of you are a materiali