o go of your own free will into
religion and to bequeath of your own free will all your worldly
possessions to the Order you join."

"Yes, I know," said Juanita. Her spirits had risen every minute. She was
gay again now. His presence seemed to restore to her the happy gift of
touching life lightly which is of the heart. And the heart knows no age,
neither is it subject to the tyranny of years.

"Well, I will marry you if there is no help for it. But..."

"But..." echoed Marcos.

"But of course it is only a sort of game, is it not?"

"Yes," he answered. "A sort of game."

"Promise?"

"I promise."

They were sitting on the steps of one of the chapels. Juanita swung round
and peered through the railings as if to see what Saint had his
habitation there.

"It is only St. Bartholomew," she said, airily. "But he will do. You have
promised, remember that. And St. Bartholomew has heard you. It is only to
save me from being a nun that we are being married. And I am to be just
the same as I am now. We can go fishing, I mean, as we used to, and climb
the mountains and have jokes just as we always do in the holidays."

"Yes," said Marcos.

She held out her hand as she had seen the peasants in Torre Garda when
they had struck a bargain and would seal it irrevocably.

"Touch it," she said with a gay laugh, as she had heard them say.

And they shook hands in the dark cloisters.

"There is a window at the end of the passage in which is your room," said
Marcos. "It looks out on to a small courtyard and is quite near the
ground. Come to that window to-morrow night at ten o'clock and I shall be
there."

"What for?" she asked.

"To be married," he answered. "My father and I will arrange it. We shall
both be there. If you do not come to-morrow night I shall come again the
next night. You will be back in your room by half-past eleven."

"Married?" asked Juanita.

"Yes."

He had risen and was standing in front of her.

"And now you must go back to the Cathedral."

"But Sor Teresa's breviary?"

"She has it in her pocket," said Marcos.

CHAPTER XV

OUR LADY OF THE SHADOWS
There were great clouds in the sky when the moon rose the next night and
one of them threw Pampeluna into dark shadows when Marcos took his place
in the little passage between the School in the Calle de la Dormitaleria
and the next building. The window at the end of the passage where Juanita
and Sor Teresa and some of the more favoured of