“Yes, Rosendo?”
“––then get her away from Simití? She does not belong here, Padre. And––?” his voice sank to a hoarse whisper––“will you help me keep her from the Church?”
Josè sat staring at the man with dilating eyes.
“Padre, she has her own Church. It is her heart.”
He leaned over and laid a hand upon the priest’s knee. His dark eyes seemed to burn like glowing coals. His whispered words were fraught with a meaning which Josè would some day learn.
“Padre, that must be left alone!”
A long silence fell upon the two men, the one massive of frame and black of face, but with a mind as simple as a child’s and a heart as white as the snow that sprinkled his raven locks––the other a youth in years, but bowed with disappointment and suffering; yet now listening with hushed breath to the words that rolled with a mighty reverberation through the chambers of his soul:
“I am God, and there is none else! Behold, I come quickly! Arise, shine, for thy light is come!”
The sweet face of the child rose out of the gloom before the priest. The years rolled back like a curtain, and he saw himself at her tender age, a white, unformed soul, awaiting the sculptor’s hand. God forbid that the hand which shaped his career should form the plastic mind of this girl!
Of a sudden a great thought flashed out of the depths of eternity and into his brain, a thought which seemed to illumine his whole past life. In the clear light thereof he seemed instantly to read meanings in numberless events which to that hour had remained hidden. His complex, misshapen career––could it have been a preparation?––and for this? He had yearned to serve his fellow-men, but had miserably failed. For, while to will was always present with him, even as with Paul, yet how to perform that which was good he found not. But now––what an opportunity opened before him! What a beautiful offering of self was here made possible? God, what a privilege!