As has been said, Carmen’s six months in the Elwin school had been a period of slow adjustment to the changed order. She had brought into this new world a charm of unsophistication, an ingenuous naÏvetÉ, such as only an untrammeled spirit nourished in an elemental civilization like that of primitive SimitÍ could develop. Added to this was the zest and eagerness stimulated by the thought that she had come as a message-bearer to a people with a great need. Her first emotion had been that of astonishment that the dwellers in the great States were not so different, after all, from those of her own unprogressive country. Her next was one of sad disillusionment, as the fact slowly dawned upon her trusting thought that the busy denizens of her new environment took no interest whatsoever in her message. And then her joy and brilliant hopefulness had chilled, and she awoke to find her strange views a barrier between herself and her associates. She had brought to the America of the North a spirit so deeply religious as to know naught else than her God and His ceaseless manifestation. She had come utterly free of dogma or creed, and happily ignorant of decaying formularies and religious caste. Her Christianity was her demonstrable interpretation of the Master’s words; and her fresh, ebulliant spirit soared unhampered in the warm atmosphere of love for mankind. Her concept of the Christ stirred no thought within her of intolerance toward those who might hold differing views; nor did it raise interposing barriers within her own mind, nor evoke those baser sentiments which have so sadly warped the souls of men into instruments of deadly hatred and crushing tyranny. Her spiritual vision, undimmed and world-embracing, 62 saw the advent of that day when all mankind would obey the commands of Jesus, and do the works which he did, even to the complete spiritualization and dematerializing of all human thought. And her burning desire was to hasten the coming of that glad hour.

The conviction that, despite its tremendous needs, humanity was steadily rejecting, even in this great land of opportunity and progress, the remedy for its consuming ills, came to her slowly. And with it a damping of her ardor, and a dulling of the fine edge of her enthusiasm. She grew quiet as the days passed, and drew away from her companions into her thought. With her increasing sense of isolation came at length a great longing to leave these inhospitable shores, and return to her native environment and the sympathy and tender solicitude of her beloved Rosendo and Padre JosÈ. But, alas! that was at present impossible. Indeed, she could not be certain now of their whereabouts. A great war was raging in Colombia, and she knew not what fate had befallen her loved ones. To her many letters directed to SimitÍ there had come back no reply. Even Harris, who had written again and again to both Rosendo and JosÈ, had received no word from them in return. Corroding fear began to assail the girl; soul-longing and heart-sickness seized upon her; her happy smile faded; and her bright, bubbling conversation ceased.

Then one day, standing alone in her room, she turned squarely upon the foul brood of evil suggestions crowding upon her and, as if they were fell spirits from the nether world, bade them begone. “Listen!” she cried aloud. “I know you for what you are––nothing! You seemed to use Padre JosÈ, but you can’t use me! God is everywhere––right here! He is my life; and you, evil thoughts, can’t make me think He isn’t! I am His image and likeness; I am His witness; and I will not witness to His opposite, evil! My life is filled with harmony; and you, evil thoughts, can’t reverse that fact! God has brought me here, else I would not have come, for He is the cause of all that is. It is for me to stand and see His glory. No! no!” as she paced about the room and seemed to ward off the assaults of an invisible enemy, “there is no power apart from Him! On that I stand!”

Then, in the lull of battle, “Father divine, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard me. And now I lay my all upon the altar of love, and throw myself upon Thy thought.”

From that day, despite continued attacks from error––despite, too, the veiled slights and covert insinuations of her schoolmates, to whom the girl’s odd views and utter refusal to share their accustomed conversation, their interest in mundane 63 affairs, their social aspirations and worldly ambitions, at length made her quite unwelcome––Carmen steadily, and without heed of diverting gesture, brought into captivity every thought to the obedience of her Christ-principle, and threw off for all time the dark cloud of pessimism which human belief and the mesmerism of events had drawn over her joyous spirit.

Mrs. Reed had not been near her since her enrollment in the school; but Ketchim had visited her often––not, however, alone, but always with one or more prospective purchasers of SimitÍ stock in tow whom he sought to influence favorably through Carmen’s interesting conversation about her native land. Harris came every Sunday, and the girl welcomed the great, blundering fellow as the coming of the day. At times he would obtain Madam Elwin’s permission to take the girl up to the city on a little sight-seeing expedition, and then he would abandon himself completely to the enjoyment of her naÏve wonder and the numberless and often piquant questions stimulated by it. He was the only one now with whom she felt any degree of freedom, and in his presence her restraint vanished and her airy gaiety again welled forth with all its wonted fervor. Once, shortly after Carmen had been enrolled, Harris took her to a concert by the New York Symphony Orchestra. But in the midst of the program, after sitting in silent rapture, the girl suddenly burst into tears and begged to be taken out. “I couldn’t stand it!” she sobbed as, outside the door, she hid her tear-stained face in his coat; “I just couldn’t! It was heavenly! Oh, it was God that we heard––it was God!” And the astonished fellow respected this sudden outburst of pent-up emotion as he led her, silent and absorbed, back to the school.

With the throwing of the girl upon her own thought came a rapid expansion of both mind and body into maturity, and the young lady who left the Elwin school that bright spring afternoon under the protection of the self-sufficient Mrs. Hawley-Crowles was very far from being the inquisitive, unabashed little girl who had so greatly shocked the good Sister Superior by her heretical views some six months before. The sophistication engendered by her intercourse with the pupils and instructors in the school had transformed the eager, trusting little maid, who could see only good into a mature woman, who, though her trust remained unshaken, nevertheless had a better understanding of the seeming power “that lusteth against the spirit,” and whose idea of her mission had been deepened into a grave sense of responsibility. She saw now, as never before, the awful unreality of the human sense of life; but she likewise understood, as never previously, its seeming reality in the human consciousness, and its terrible mesmeric power 64 over those materialistic minds into which the light of spirituality had as yet scarcely penetrated. Her thought had begun to shape a definite purpose; she was still to be a message-bearer, but the message must be set forth in her life conduct. The futility of promiscuous verbal delivery of the message to whomsoever might cross her path had been made patent. Jesus taught––and then proved. She must do likewise, and let her deeds attest the truth of her words. And from the day that she bade the suggestions of fear and evil leave her, she had consecrated herself anew to a searching study of the Master’s life and words, if happily she might acquire “that mind” which he so wondrously expressed.

But the assumption of an attitude of quiet demonstration was by no means sudden. There were times when she could not restrain the impulse to challenge the beliefs so authoritatively set forth by the preachers and lecturers whom Madam Elwin invited to address her pupils, and who, unlike Jesus, first taught, and then relegated their proofs to a life beyond the grave. Once, shortly after entering the school, forgetful of all but the error being preached, she had risen in the midst of an eloquent sermon by the eminent Darius Borwell, a Presbyterian divine of considerable repute, and asked him why it was that, as he seemed to set forth, God had changed His mind after creating spiritual man, and had created a man of dust. She had later repented her scandalous conduct in sackcloth and ashes; but it did not prevent her from abruptly leaving the chapel on a subsequent Sunday when another divine, this time a complaisant Methodist, quite satisfied with his theories of endless future rewards and fiery punishments, dwelt at length upon the traditional idea that the sorrows of the world are God-sent for mankind’s chastisement and discipline.

Then she gradually learned to be less defiant of the conventions and beliefs of the day, and determined quietly to rise superior to them. But her experience with the preachers wrought within her a strong determination henceforth to listen to no religious propaganda whatsoever, to give no further heed to current theological beliefs, and to enter no church edifice, regardless of the tenets of the sect worshiping within its precincts. The wisdom of this decision she left for the future to determine.

“Oh,” she cried, “my only mission is to manifest the divine, not to waste time listening to the theories of ignorant preachers, who fail utterly to prove the truth of their teachings! Oh, how the world needs love––just love! And I am going to love it with the selfless love that comes from God, and destroys error and the false beliefs that become externalized in the 65 human consciousness as sickness, failure, old age, and death! Love, love, love––it is mankind’s greatest need! Why, if the preachers only knew, the very heart and soul of Christianity is love! It is love that casts out fear; and fear is at the bottom of all sickness, for fear leads to belief in other gods than the one Father of Christ Jesus! Christianity is aflame with love! Oh, God––take me out into the world, and let me show it what love can do!”

And the divine ear heard the call of this beautiful disciple of the Christ––aye, had heard it long before the solicitous, fluttering little Madam Elwin decided that the strange girl’s unevangelical views were inimical to the best interests of her very select school. The social ambitions of the wealthy Mrs. Hawley-Crowles threw wide the portals of the world to Carmen, and she entered, wide-eyed and wondering. Nor did she return until the deepest recesses of the human mind had revealed to her their abysmal hideousness, their ghastly emptiness of reality, and their woeful mesmeric deception.