“Because, you know, Padre,” the child continued, coming up to him and slipping her hand into his, “padre Rosendo once told me that God was Love; and after that I knew we just had to love everything and everybody, or else He can’t see us––can He, Padre?”
He can’t see us––if we don’t love everything and everybody! Well! Josè wondered what sort of interpretation the Vatican, with its fiery hatred of heretics, would put upon this remark.
“Can He, Padre?” insisted the girl.
“Dear child, in these matters you are teaching me; not I you,” replied the noncommittal priest.
“But, Padre, you are going to teach the people in the church,” the girl ventured quizzically.
Ah, so he was! And he had wondered what. In his hour of need the answer was vouchsafed him.
“Yes, dearest child––and I am going to teach them what I learn from you.”
Carmen regarded him for a moment uncertainly. “But, padre Rosendo says you are to teach me,” she averred.
“And so I am, little one,” the priest replied; “but not one half as much as I shall learn from you.”
Doña Maria’s summons to breakfast interrupted the conversation. Throughout the repast Josè felt himself subjected to the closest scrutiny by Carmen. What was running through her thought, he could only vaguely surmise. But he instinctively 39 felt that he was being weighed and appraised by this strange child, and that she was finding him wanting in her estimate of what manner of man a priest of God ought to be. And yet he knew that she embraced him in her great love. Oftentimes his quick glance at her would find her serious gaze bent upon him. But whenever their eyes met, her sweet face would instantly relax and glow with a smile of tenderest love––a love which, he felt, was somehow, in some way, destined to reconstruct his shattered life.