and made of them a sun for its brow. I did not
know when it would live, but I knew that it should live. Perhaps it was
the whole world.

It vanished, leaving sky and ocean and Andalusia. But great visions
leave great peace. After it, for this day, it seemed not worth while to
grieve and miserably to forebode. Through the hours that I lay there by
the sea, airs from that land or that earth blew about me and faint songs
visited my ears, and the gray day was only gray like a dove's breast.

Jayme de Marchena stayed by the lonely sea because that seemed the
safest place to stay. At hand was the small port of Palos that might
not know what was breeding in Seville, and going thither at nightfall I
found lodging and supper in a still corner where all night I heard the
Tinto flowing by.

I had wandered to Palos because of the Franciscan convent of Santa Maria
de la Rabida and my very distant kins-man, Fray Juan Perez. The day
after the gray day by the shore I walked half a league of sandy road
and came to convent gate. The porter let me in, and I waited in a little
court with doves about me and a swinging bell above until the brother
whom he had called returned and took me to Prior's room. At first Fray
Juan Perez was stiff and cold, but by littles this changed and he
became a good man, large-minded and with a sense for kindred. Clearly he
thought that I should not have had a Jewish grandmother, nor have lived
with her from my third to my tenth birthday, and most clearly that I
should not have written that which I had written. But his God was an
energetic, enterprising, kindly Prince, rather bold himself and tolerant
of heathen. Fray Juan Perez even intimated a doubt if God wanted the
Inquisition. "But that's going rather far!" he said hastily and sat
drumming the table and pursing his lips. Presently he brought out, "But
you know I can't do anything!"

I did know it. What could he do? I suppose I had had a half-hope of
something. I knew not what. Without a hope I would not have come to
La Rabida. But it was maimed from the first, and now it died. I made a
gesture of relinquishment. "No, I suppose you cannot--"

He said after a moment that he was glad to see that I had let my beard
grow and was very plainly dressed, though I had never been elaborate
there, and especially was he glad that I was come to Palos not as Jayme
de Marchena, but under a plain and simple name, Juan Lepe, to wit. His
advice was to flee from the wrath