“It is easy to understand their language, isn’t it, Padre? They don’t speak as we do, but they reflect. And that is better than speaking. They reflect God. They stand for His ideas in the human mind. And so do you. And I. Aren’t they wonderful, these flowers! But you know, they are only the way we interpret certain of God’s wonderful ideas. Only, because we mortals believe in death, we see these beautiful things at last reflecting our thought of death––don’t we? We see only our thoughts, after all. Everything we see about us is reflected thought. First we see our thoughts of life and beauty and good. And then our thoughts of decay and death.
“But God––He never sees anything but the good,” she went on. “He sees the real, not the supposition. And when we learn to see only as He does, why, then we will never again see death. We will see ourselves as we really are, immortal. God sees Himself that way. Jesus learned to see that way, didn’t he? His thought was finally so pure that he saw nothing but good. And that gave him such power that he did those things that the poor, ignorant, wrong-thinking people called miracles. But they were only the things that you and I and everybody else ought to be doing to-day––and would be doing, if we thought as he did, instead of thinking of evil.
“But,” she panted, as she sat down beside him, “I’ve talked a lot, haven’t I? And you sent for me because you wanted to talk. But, remember,” holding up an admonitory finger, “I shall not listen if you talk anything but good. Oh, Padre dear,” looking up wistfully into his drawn face, “you are still thinking that two and two are seven! Will you never again think right? How can you ever expect to see good if you look only at evil? If I looked only at wilted flowers I would never know there were any others.”
“Carmen,” he said in a hollow voice, “I love you.”
“Why, of course you do,” returned the artless girl. “You can’t help it. You have just got to love me and everything and everybody. That’s reflecting God.”
He had not meant to say that. But it had been floating like foam on his tossing mind. He took her hand.
“You are going away from me,” he continued, almost in a whisper.
“Why, no, Padre,” she replied quickly; “you are going too! Padre Rosendo said we could start to-morrow at sunrise.”
“I do not go,” he said in a quavering voice. “I remain, in Simití.”
She looked up at him wonderingly. What meant this change which had come over him so suddenly? She drew closer.