Stimulated by reproof, I waxed impertinent. "Not even if it stands within range of the guns? Now, truly, truly, were you not the least bit frightened that morning of the battle?"
The sunny southern smile was a fleeting one, and left a reminiscent shadow in the eyes.
"Frightened? Oh, no! There were no guns between us and Paradise. From early dawn we heard the firing, and hour after hour we knelt before the altar and prayed to the Mother of God to comfort the souls of the brave men who were dying for la patria; but we were not frightened."
There were strange jostlings of ideas in that cloistered cell, especially when the dusk had stolen in between our bending faces and the Spanish page.
Once we talked of suicide. That morning it had been a wealthy young Parisian who had paid its daily tribute to the Seine.
"What a horror!" gasped the little sister, clasping her slender hands against her breast. "It is a mortal sin. And how foolish! For if life is hard to bear, surely perdition is harder."
"It does not seem to me so strange in case of the poor," I responded, waiving theology. "But a rich man, though his own happiness fails, has still the power of making others happy."
"Ah, but I understand!" cried Little Manila, her eyes like stars in the dimness. "The devil does not see truth as the blessed spirits do, but sees falsehoods even as the world. And so in his blindness he believes the soul of a rich man more precious than the souls of the poor, and tempts the rich man more than others. Yet when the devil has that soul, will he find it made of gold?"
