"Good God!" whispered the man. "You don't know what you are saying. Remember that I dare not touch your lips, and that I love you—love you—love you!"
Then the nestling birds in the gold-of-Ophir rose were startled from their repose by the man who strode through the open window and walked blindly out into the garden.
The padre watched the girl's face on the pillow for a moment, and heard her sobs, and retreated softly to the hall, where he met the others; and at Doña Ana, when they were alone a moment, he smiled with a certain elation.
"Look distressed no longer, little one," he said, reassuringly. "You have helped me to a good day's work, very good. Listen! I like your new American friend very much, and when you go to San Juan I count on you to help to make him welcome there. He is going to do me a good turn with Rafael Arteaga, and I forgive him all the horses he helped to save for the army men. He does not know it, but he is going to be my good friend, that fine Americano. He is so fine and so strong, Ana, that he thinks he can put a woman he loves in a niche of the memory, as we put statues of the saints in the niches of the altar-places."
"What do you say?" she queried, perplexed by his smile and words.
"And that though the woman loves him so much that she kisses her own hands where his lips have been, and though he loves her so much that he is half mad at denial, yet he will leave her always there in the little niche of the altar,—just above his head, but in reach of his hands; and the hands will never try to lift her down, Anita. He will only look at her as he rides past, and leave her there to remember."
"I think you have gone mad," said Ana, sharply. "What did the Indian witch tell you in the hall?"
"Ask her!" he suggested. But when Ana did so, she met only scowls and gutturals. And even the sound sleep of Raquel, and the absolute freedom from delirium, brought nothing but suspicion to the heart of old Polonia. It was witchcraft, like all the rest, and the padre should have put the malediction on the Americano when he had so good a chance. Above all, he should not have let him ride away in safety.