He was impressed now as he stood before this dark still house where a dozen ignorant fanatics waited to take his blood for what was to them a holy purpose. He knew that this Morada was a [pg 165] very old one. He thought of all the true penitents who had knocked for admission at its door and had gone through its bloody ordeal with a zeal of madness which had enabled them to cry loudly for blows and more blows until they fell insensible. He tried to imagine their state of mind, but he could not. He was of their race and a growth of the same soil, but an alien civilization had touched him and sundered him from them, yet without taking him for its own. He could only nerve himself to face this ordeal because it would serve his one great purpose.
As he stood there, a curious half-irrelevant thought came into his mind. He knew that the marks they would make on his back would be permanent. He had seen the long rough scars on the backs of sheep-herders, stripped to the waist for the hot work of shearing. And he wondered how he would explain these strange scars to Julia. He imagined her discovering them with her long dainty hands, her round white arms. A great longing surged up in him that seemed to weaken the very tissues of his body. He shook himself, threw away his cigarette, went to the heavy wooden door and knocked.
Now he spoke a rigamarole in Spanish which had been taught him by rote.
“God knocks at this mission’s door for His clemency,” he called.
From within came a deep-voiced chorus, the first sound he had heard from the house, seeming weirdly to be the voice of the house itself.
“Penance, penance, which seeks salvation!” it chanted.
“Saint Peter will open to me the gate, bathing me with the light, in the name of Mary, with the seal of Jesus,” Ramon went on, repeating as he had learned. “I ask this confraternity. Who gives this house light?”
“Jesus,” answered the chorus within.
“Who fills it with joy?”
“Mary.”