“Yes, child.” The necessity to answer could not be avoided.
“And He is everywhere?”
“Yes.” He had to say it.
“Then where is the wickedness, Padre?”
“Why––but, chiquita, you don’t understand; you are too young to reason about such things; and––”
In his heart Josè knew he spoke not the truth. He felt the 28 great brown eyes of the girl penetrate his naked soul; and he knew that in the dark recesses of the inner man they fell upon the grinning skeleton of hypocrisy. Carmen might be, doubtless was, incapable of reasoning. Of logical processes she knew nothing. But by what crass assumption might he, admittedly woefully defeated in his combat with Fate, oppose his feeble shafts of worldly logic to this child’s instinct, an instinct of whose inerrancy her daily walk was a living demonstration? In quick penitence and humility he stretched out his arm and drew her unresisting to him.
“Dear little child of God,” he murmured, as he bent over her and touched his lips to her rich brown curls, “I have tried my life long to learn what you already know. And at last I have been led to you––to you, little one, who shall be a lamp unto my feet. Dearest child, I want to know your God as you know Him. I want you to lead me to Him, for you know where He is.”
“He is everywhere, Padre dear,” whispered the child, as she nestled close to the priest and stole her soft arms gently about his neck. “But we don’t see Him nor hear Him if we have bad thoughts, and if we don’t love everybody and everything, even Cucumbra, and Cantar-las-horas, and––”
“Yes, chiquita, I know now,” interrupted Josè. “I don’t wonder they all love you.”
“But, Padre dear, I love them––and I love you.”