asure, or the fables of El Dorado and Parime. Jose had
time for them all, though as he listened his thought hovered ever
about the green verge of Galilee.

By his side worked Carmen, delving assiduously into the mysteries
of mathematics and the modern languages. When the day's work closed
for them both, he often asked her to sing to him. And then, leaning
back with closed eyes, he would yield himself to the soft dreams
which her sweet voice called up from his soul's unfathomed depths.
Often they walked together by the lake on a clear night; and on
these little excursions, during which they were never beyond
Rosendo's watchful eye, Jose reveled in the girl's airy gaiety and
the spontaneous flow of her sparkling thought. He called her his
domestic sunbeam; but in his serious moments--and they were
many--he studied her with a wistful earnestness, while he sought to
imbibe her great trust, her fearlessness, her unswerving loyalty to
the Christ-principle of immanent Good. He would never permit
restraint to be imposed upon her, even by Rosendo or his good wife.
She knew not what it was to be checked in the freest manifestation
of her natural character. But there was little occasion for
restraint, for Carmen dwelt ever in the consciousness of a spiritual
universe, and to it paid faithful tribute. She saw and knew only
from a spiritual basis; and she reaped the rewards incident thereto.
His life and hers were such as fools might label madness, a
colorless, vegetative existence, devoid of even the elemental
things that make mundane existence worth the while. But the
appraisal of fools is their own folly. Jose knew that the torrid
days which drew their monotonous length over the little town were
witnessing a development in both himself and the child that some day
would bear richest fruit. So far from being educated to distrust
spiritual power, as are the children of this world, Carmen was
growing up to know no other. Instead of the preponderance of her
belief and confidence being directed to the material, she was
developing the consciousness that the so-called evidence of the
physical senses is but mortal thought, the suppositional opposite of
the thought of the infinite God who says to mankind: "For I know the
thoughts that I think toward you, thoughts of peace and not of
evil, to give you an expected end." Jose knew that his method of
education was revolutionary. But he also knew that it was not
wholly his; that the child had