"Unless you marry, too, Padre," she said, dropping her eyes.

"Unless I marry! I--a priest! But--what has that to do with it,
girl?"

"Well--oh, Padre dear--can't you see? For then I would marry--" She
buried her face in his shoulder.

"Yes, _chiquita_," he said, dully wondering.

Her arms tightened about his neck. "You," she murmured.

It was the first expression of the kind that had ever come from her
lips. Jose's heart thumped violently. The Goddess of Fortune had
suddenly thrown her most precious jewel into his lap. Joy welled up in
flood tides from unknown depths within. His eyes swam. Then--he
remembered. And thick night fell upon his soul.

Minutes passed, and the two sat very quiet. Then Carmen raised her
head. "Padre," she whispered, "you don't say anything. I know you love
me. And you will not always be a priest--not always," shaking her
beautiful curls with suggestive emphasis.

Why did she say that? He wondered vaguely. The people called her an
_hada_. He sometimes thought they had reason to. And then he knew that
she never moved except in response to a beckoning hand that still,
after all these years, remained invisible to him.

"_Chiquita_," he said in low response, "I fear--I fear that can never
be. And even if--ah, _chiquita_, I am so much older than you, little
girl--almost seventeen years!"

"You do not want to marry me, even if you could, Padre?" she queried,
looking wistfully into his eyes, while her own grew moist.

He clutched her to him again. "Carmen!" he cried wildly, "you little
know--you little know! But--child, we must not talk of these things!
Wait--wait!"

"But, Padre dear," she pleaded, "just say that you _do_ love me that
way--just say it--your little girl wants to hear it."

God above! She, pleading that he would say he loved her! His head sank
upon his breast. He silently prayed that his tortured soul might burst
and let his wasted life ebb into oblivion while his pent-up misery
poured out.

"Carmen!" he cried with the despair of the lost. "I love you--love
you--love you! Nay, child, I adore you! God! That I might hold you
thus forever!"

She reached up quickly and kissed him. "Some day, Padre dear," she
murmured softly, "you will stop thinking that two and two are seven.
Then everything good will come to you."

She sank back in his arms and nestled close to him, as if she longed
to enter his empty heart and fill the great void with her measureless
love.

"And, P