Only an instant he gave to it all, but in that instant he made certain that every man and woman on the place was at prayers, except the old Indian woman, who squatted with covered head in the hall, and himself. His movements were no longer aimless. He retreated swiftly to the veranda, and tossed the cigarro into the garden. One glance he gave the wooden-like figure of the old Indian. Only as a last resort would he attempt to pass that way, but if the windows were not barred—

They were not. Ana had gone against her aunt's Mexican rule, which was that all fresh air should be excluded from a sick-room; and while that lady and all her servants exclaimed against the admission of air, they let the blame lie on the shoulders of Ana, and no one closed the window. It swung wide to the wind of the west, and on the couch within, Bryton could see Raquel's face.

The lids were closed over the violet eyes, and the lips were apart, showing the white teeth. It was still so light that he could see the little flush on the cheeks against the white pillow, and on her right hand one little old ring of plain gold. On the left hand shone the red gold of her new wedding-ring.

She looked so pathetically young and so utterly alone, as she lay there, that all the man in him arose in protest, and a mist of tears blinded him for a moment to the beauty of her face.

"Poor little one," he whispered, "my poor little broken DoÑa Espiritu—my one lady of the spirit!"

The sound of the words did not wake her, but the sense of them reached her some way; for she opened her eyes suddenly, and without any shadow of wonder they rested on his face.

"I waited a long time," she said at last, "then I heard your voice, and I knew you were coming to me."

He set his lips tightly, and nodded, but did not speak.

"I waited a long time," she repeated, as a child appealing for understanding. "Did they tell you I thought you were dead?"

He nodded assent. No one had told him so, but the words explained much.

"You said you would come back if you lived, and you never came, and they told me—the padre told me—that you were dead!"

"So I am," he said, gently; "and they told me, my lady of the spirit, that you had taken the final vow of the convent—that the night, our one night, was a thing you were forgetting under a black veil. Child, child! they lied to us, and now—"

"Forgetting?" she said, slowly. "How does one forget a night like that, when we walked out of the wilderness into the day together? You never came back; and I—I wanted to be in the world where you had been, so I—"

"I know," he whispered, gently; "I know, my doÑa of the spirit."

He had not meant to touch her,—only to look at her and speak to her once, and then ride wherever fate might take him.

But she reached her hands to him, and with a smothered groan he knelt by her couch and his arms were around her.

"Don't weep like that!" she whispered, and laid her hand on his head. "I have wept enough for two, since our carriages passed and I found you had not died. And you—you knew all the time."

"I knew when I saw you kneel in your wedding-veil and take that oath—not until then. I heard his mother say that he was the man you loved; and, soul of mine! you had not said as much as that in words to me. So I—"

"You heard that? Then you know the life I have to live." He nodded, without lifting his head from the pillow of her arm. There are some things hard to face with open eyes, but she felt the shudder that passed over him. Through the opened window came the rise and fall of many murmuring voices repeating the rosary. In the gold-of-Ophir rose-tree two birds fluttered and called to each other in the very whisper of bird notes. The soft lavender-grays of a Californian nightfall were sifting through the warm light of the afterglow, and away there in the west stretched bars of blood red, the last trace of the dying day. All the sequestration of the hour was about them, all the hush of the pause, before the final plunge of their day into the shadows, and the two souls were enveloped by the atmosphere of that ever-recurring tragedy of the hours, and of lives.

How long he knelt there he did not know. She felt his lips on her wrist, and felt rather than heard the broken words he was whispering—the wild, mad words he had meant not to say, as he had meant not to touch her; then her eyes grew bright as the stars picking their way through the vault of blue, and the golden-haired woman of the carriage belonged to a feverish phantasy of the past hours. She might exist, that golden-haired creature of beauty, but the real life of the man who knelt there in the dusk belonged only to her, to her always, through the bond of one starlit Mexican night of witchery, and this last hour of the California day.

Nothing made any difference now; though she lived in a hell of purgatory all her waking life, the bonds of their dream life would be closer than all else—always, always!

She felt suddenly well and strong. Ah, there was so much in the world to live for! Though they never met, never spoke again, this hour of the tryst would be his through all her life—her hour of a rosary of the heart.

A girl's voice in the patio came softly through the dark in an old Spanish hymn. It was Juanita, and the service of prayer was ending in the usual duo; one of the vaqueros with a fine barytone voice was singing the echoing stanzas of praise.

It was the signal for dispersing, but the man at the couch did not know that. Neither did he know that the crouched form of the Indian was no longer in the hall. She was waiting in the dusk at the door, and she was clutching with a claw-like hand at the robe of the padre, and muttering, "He is there—it is true. He is there—and she is again bewitched. Now you will help me to kill the American?"

The padre looked at her sharply, and then motioned to Ana, who was close behind.

"Remain with the others. Make some excuse to keep them there—another hymn—anything. And be quick—quick!"

Startled though she was, Ana obeyed, and from the door of the hall he heard again the voice of Juanita; this time it was in a favorite known to all, and the volume of sound told him that Don Enrico himself was joining in the refrain, and that no one would leave the patio until the finale was reached.

No candle burned now in the hall. Polonia had blown it out, that no ray might enter the half-open door of the inner room. She would have gone with the padre, but the sudden vigorous grasp of his hand on her shoulder stopped her where she stood, and without a word being spoken, she knew better than to follow.

Quickly as a cat of the hills, the padre crossed the hall and stood where he could see the open window and the kneeling man, and the hand of Raquel on his bent head.

"Every night when the dusk comes it will be our time of the day," she was saying. "They told me you were dead, else—but you know. I think the mad hours have gone by for me; I can go on living if—if you do not forget."

The listening priest could not hear what the man said, but she heard, and smiled, and sighed.

"There is one thing," she said, hesitatingly: "the ring, you have worn it a year—and—"

"I know," and he lifted his head. "We need no visible emblem, you and I. I put it back on your finger, my lady of the spirit,—DoÑa Espiritu;—a pledge of renunciation, and a reminder of the rosary of the dusk."

She took from her right hand the little gold band and gave it to him, and in its place he slipped the onyx ring of the Aztec eagle and serpent.

"I did not tell you what that ring means to my people," she said, as he kissed it in its new resting-place. "Maybe I never can tell you. I—I thought I could be stronger if I wore it on my own hand, for—for the reason that my heart went out of my bosom to follow it, and—and I rode my horse as fast and as far as I could from you, because I—was afraid." "Good God!" whispered the man. "You don't know what you are saying. Remember that I dare not touch your lips, and that I love you—love you—love you!"

Then the nestling birds in the gold-of-Ophir rose were startled from their repose by the man who strode through the open window and walked blindly out into the garden.

The padre watched the girl's face on the pillow for a moment, and heard her sobs, and retreated softly to the hall, where he met the others; and at DoÑa Ana, when they were alone a moment, he smiled with a certain elation.

"Look distressed no longer, little one," he said, reassuringly. "You have helped me to a good day's work, very good. Listen! I like your new American friend very much, and when you go to San Juan I count on you to help to make him welcome there. He is going to do me a good turn with Rafael Arteaga, and I forgive him all the horses he helped to save for the army men. He does not know it, but he is going to be my good friend, that fine Americano. He is so fine and so strong, Ana, that he thinks he can put a woman he loves in a niche of the memory, as we put statues of the saints in the niches of the altar-places." "What do you say?" she queried, perplexed by his smile and words.

"And that though the woman loves him so much that she kisses her own hands where his lips have been, and though he loves her so much that he is half mad at denial, yet he will leave her always there in the little niche of the altar,—just above his head, but in reach of his hands; and the hands will never try to lift her down, Anita. He will only look at her as he rides past, and leave her there to remember."

"I think you have gone mad," said Ana, sharply. "What did the Indian witch tell you in the hall?"

"Ask her!" he suggested. But when Ana did so, she met only scowls and gutturals. And even the sound sleep of Raquel, and the absolute freedom from delirium, brought nothing but suspicion to the heart of old Polonia. It was witchcraft, like all the rest, and the padre should have put the malediction on the Americano when he had so good a chance. Above all, he should not have let him ride away in safety.