ulder.
Touched by some occult suggestion in its soft contact, he sank again
into his seat.

"Yet you ask for the sanctuary of His house--a sanctuary bought by that
contrition whose first expression is the bared and open soul! To the
first worldly shelter you sought--the peon's hut or the Alcalde's
casa--you would have thought it necessary to bring a story. You would
not conceal from the physician whom you asked for balsam either the
wound, the symptoms, or the cause? Enough," he said kindly, as Hurlstone
was about to reply. "You shall have your request. You shall stay here. I
will be your physician, and will salve your wounds; if any poison I know
not of rankle there, you will not blame me, son, but perhaps you will
assist me to find it. I will give you a secluded cell in the dormitory
until the ship has sailed. And then"--

He dropped quietly on the settle, took the young man's hand paternally
in his own, and gazed into his eyes as if he read his soul.

And then . . . Ah, yes . . . What then? Hurlstone glanced once more
around him. He thought of the quiet night; of the great peace that had
fallen upon him since he had entered the garden, and the promise of
a greater peace that seemed to breathe with the incense from those
venerable walls. He thought of that crumbling barrier, that even in its
ruin seemed to shut out, more completely than anything he had conceived,
his bitter past, and the bitter world that recalled it. He thought of
the long days to come, when, forgetting and forgotten, he might find a
new life among these simple aliens, themselves forgotten by the world.
He had thought of this once before in the garden; it occurred to him
again in this Lethe-like oblivion of the little church, in the kindly
pressure of the priest's hand. The ornaments no longer looked
uncouth and barbaric--rather they seemed full of some new spiritual
significance. He suddenly lifted his eyes to Padre Esteban, and, half
rising to his feet, said,--

"Are we alone?"

"We are; it is a half-hour yet before mass," said the priest.

"My story will not last so long," said the young man hurriedly, as if
fearing to change his mind. "Hear me, then--it is no crime nor offense
to any one; more than that, it concerns no one but myself--it is of"--

"A woman," said the priest softly. "So! we will sit down, my son."

He lifted his hand with a soothing gesture--the movement of a physician
who has just arrived at an easy diagnosis of certain