s, it seemed to Mazaro, as if the old man, were
he a sacristan, should say to some single worshiper, "Here, you may have
this madonna; I make it a present to you." Or, if such was not the
handsome young Cuban's feeling, such, at least, was the disguise his
jealousy put on. If Pauline was to be handed down from her niche, why,
then, farewell Cafe des Exiles. She was its preserving influence, she
made the place holy; she was the burning candles on the altar. Surely
the reader will pardon the pen that lingers in the mention of her.

And yet I know not how to describe the forbearing, unspoken tenderness
with which all these exiles regarded the maiden. In the balmy
afternoons, as I have said, they gathered about their mother's knee,
that is to say, upon the banquette outside the door. There, lolling back
in their rocking-chairs, they would pass the evening hours with
oft-repeated tales of home; and the moon would come out and glide among
the clouds like a silver barge among islands wrapped in mist, and they
loved the silently gliding orb with a sort of worship, because from her
soaring height she looked down at the same moment upon them and upon
their homes in the far Antilles. It was somewhat thus that they looked
upon Pauline as she seemed to them held up half way to heaven, they knew
not how. Ah, those who have been pilgrims; who have wandered out beyond
harbor and light; whom fate hath led in lonely paths strewn with thorns
and briers not of their own sowing; who, homeless in a land of homes,
see windows gleaming and doors ajar, but not for them,--it is they who
well understand what the worship is that cries to any daughter of our
dear mother Eve whose footsteps chance may draw across the path, the
silent, beseeching cry, "Stay a little instant that I may look upon you.
Oh, woman, beautifier of the earth! Stay till I recall the face of my
sister; stay yet a moment while I look from afar, with helpless-hanging
hands, upon the softness of thy cheek, upon the folded coils of thy
shining hair; and my spirit shall fall down and say those prayers which
I may never again--God knoweth--say at home."

She was seldom seen; but sometimes, when the lounging exiles would be
sitting in their afternoon circle under the eaves, and some old man
would tell his tale of fire and blood and capture and escape, and the
heads would lean forward from the chair-backs and a great stillness
would follow the ending of the story, old M. D'Hemecourt w