ful words than those in which he persuaded Bonita
to accept Senor Mains, to forget her old lovers, and henceforth to be
happy. He is their friend. I wish I could tell you what that means.
It sounds so simple. It is really simple. All great things are so. For
Senor Stewart it was natural to be loyal to his friend, to have a fine
sense of the honor due to a woman who had loved and given, to bring
about their marriage, to succor them in their need and loneliness. It
was natural for him never to speak of them. It would have been natural
for him to give his life in their defense if peril menaced them. Senora,
I want you to understand that to me the man has the same stability, the
same strength, the same elements which I am in the habit of attributing
to the physical life around me in this wild and rugged desert."

Madeline listened as one under a spell. It was not only that this
soft-voiced, eloquent priest knew how to move the heart, stir the soul;
but his defense, his praise of Stewart, if they had been couched in the
crude speech of cowboys, would have been a glory to her.

"Senora, I pray you, do not misunderstand my mission. Beyond my
confession to you I have only a duty to tell you of the man whose wife
you are. But I am a priest and I can read the soul. The ways of God are
inscrutable. I am only a humble instrument. You are a noble woman, and
Senor Stewart is a man of desert iron forged anew in the crucible of
love. Quien sabe? Senor Stewart swore he would kill me if I betrayed
him. But he will not lift his hand against me. For the man bears you a
very great and pure love, and it has changed him. I no longer fear his
threat, but I do fear his anger, should he ever know I spoke of his
love, of his fool's paradise. I have watched his dark face turned to the
sun setting over the desert. I have watched him lift it to the light
of the stars. Think, my gracious and noble lady, think what is his
paradise? To love you above the spirit of the flesh; to know you are his
wife, his, never to be another's except by his sacrifice; to watch you
with a secret glory of joy and pride; to stand, while he might, between
you and evil; to find his happiness in service; to wait, with never a
dream of telling you, for the hour to come when to leave you free he
must go out and get himself shot! Senora, that is beautiful, it is
sublime, it is terrible. It has brought me to you with my confession. I
repeat, Senora, the ways of God are inscrutab