“Very,” she replied, profoundly serious.
The joke was excellent, and he roared with mirth. “Bueno, pues!” he commented, reaching over and uncorking with shaking hand the bottle that stood on the table. Then, filling a glass, “Suppose you thank Him for sending his little Diego this estimable wine and your own charming self, eh? Then tell me what He says.” Whereat he guffawed loudly and slapped his bulging sides.
The girl had already bowed her head again in her hands. A long pause ensued. Diego’s beady eyes devoured the beautiful creature before him. Then he waxed impatient. “Bien, little Passion flower,” he interrupted, “if you have conveyed to Him my infinite gratitude, perhaps He will now let you come to me, eh?”
Carmen looked up. A faint smile hovered upon her lips. “I have thanked Him, Padre––for you and for me,” she said; “for you, that you really are His child, even if you don’t know it; and for me that I know He always hears me. That was what the good man Jesus said, you know, when he waked Lazarus out of the death-sleep. Don’t you remember? And so I kept thanking Him all the way down the river.”
Diego’s eyes bulged as if they would pop from his head, and his mouth fell open wide, but no sound issued therefrom. The girl went on quietly:
“I was not afraid on the river, Padre. And I was not afraid to come in here with you. I knew, just as the good man Jesus did at the tomb of Lazarus, that God had heard me––He just couldn’t be God if He hadn’t, you know. And then I remembered what the good man said about not resisting evil; for, you know, if we resist evil we make it real––and we never, never can overcome anything real, can we? So I resisted evil with good, just as Jesus told us to do. I just knew that God was everywhere, and that evil was unreal, and had no power at all. And so the bogas didn’t hurt me coming down the river. And you––you will not either, Padre.”
She stopped and smiled sweetly at him. Then, very seriously:
“Padre, one reason why I was not afraid to come in here with you was that I thought God might want to talk to you through me, and I could help you. You need help, you know.”
The man settled back in his chair and stared stupidly at her. His face expressed utter consternation, confusion, and total lack of comprehension. Once he muttered under his breath, “Caramba! she is surely an hada!” But Carmen did not hear him. Absorbed in her mission, she went on earnestly: