“Chiquita––” His voice was thick. “You––you believe all that, don’t you?”
“No, Padre dear”––she smiled up at him through the darkness––“I don’t believe it, I know it.”
“But––how––how do you know it?”
“God tells me, Padre. I hear Him, always. And I prove it every day. The trouble is, you believe it, but I don’t think you ever try to prove it. If you believed my problems in algebra could be solved, but never tried to prove it––well, you wouldn’t do very much in algebra, would you?” She laughed at the apt comparison.
Josè’s straining eyes were peering straight ahead. Through the thick gloom he saw the mutilated figure of the Christ hanging on its cross beside the crumbling altar. It reflected the broken image of the Christ-principle in the hearts of men. And was he not again crucifying the gentle Christ? Did not the world daily crucify him and nail him with their false beliefs to the cross of carnal error which they set up in the Golgotha of their own souls? And were they not daily paying the awful penalty therefor? Aye, paying it in agony, in torturing agony of soul and body, in blasted hopes, crumbling ambitions, and inevitable death!
“Padre dear, what did the good man say sickness came from?” Carmen’s soft voice brought him back from his reflections.
“Sickness? Why, he always coupled disease with sin.”
“And sin?”
“Sin is––is unrighteousness.”
“And that is––?” she pursued relentlessly.