tion as an Inca princess, this
same girl would have fawned at her feet, and begged to kiss the edge
of her robe! And she would have used every art of cajolery to
ingratiate herself into Carmen's favor, to catch the social crumbs
that our girl might chance to drop!"

"There, there, Hitt," soothed Father Waite. "Have you any idea that
Carmen is at all injured by Miss West's supercilious conduct?"

"Not in the least!" asseverated Hitt vigorously. "But it makes me
so--!"

"There, check that! You're forgetting the girl's influence, aren't
you?"

Hitt gulped his wrath down his long throat. "Waite," he blurted, "that
girl's an angel! She isn't real!"

"Oh, yes, she is!" replied Father Waite. "She's so real that we don't
understand her--so real that she has been totally misunderstood by the
petty minds that have sought to crush her here in New York, that's
all."

"But certainly she is unique--"

"Ah, yes; unique in that she goes about putting her arms around people
and telling them that she loves them. Yes, that certainly is unique!
And she is unique in that her purity and goodness hang about her like
an exquisite aura, and make people instinctively turn and look after
her as she passes. Unique in that in her sweet presence one seems to
hear a strain of heavenly music vibrating on the air. So unique that
the dawn, the nesting birds, the wild flowers, the daily sunset,
fairly intoxicate her with ecstasy and make her life a lyric."

Hitt essayed to reply; but the words hung in his throat.

"Yes," continued Father Waite, "she is so unique that when the
empty-headed, vain young Duke of Altern, learning that she had been
thrown out of society because of the base rumor regarding her
parentage, sent her a written statement to the effect that there was
no engagement between them, and demanded that she sign it, she did
so, with a happy smile, with an invocation, with a prayer for blessing
upon those who had tried to ruin her."

"Good God! Did she do that?"

"Aye, she did. And when Mrs. Hawley-Crowles and Ames and Lafelle
filched La Libertad from her, she would have given them the clothes on
her back with it, if they had demanded them. Yes, she's unique--so
unique that again and again I hear her murmur, as she looks off
absently into space: 'If it is right that he should have a son, then I
want it to be so.'"

"Referring to--that priest--Jose de Rincon?"

"Yes, doubtless. And time and again I have heard her say: 'God is