"Never fear they will lead us too far astray, the harmless dreams," she laughed. "If they do, I shall do heavy penance; be sure of that!"
"You look like a witch, instead of a devotee, in this half-light," observed Ana. "Your eyes are like stars; and—what has wakened in you this wild mood? Is it the wilderness alone?"
"Not quite," acknowledged Raquel, demurely. "Since you will have a definite cause, I will confess, Anita mia, that it was the white, strong arms of—of—never look so frightened, dear,—of my friend the aliso tree!"
They both laughed, but Ana sat a moment by the little camp-fire and stared at her.
"That is all very well, and you have your good fun with me," she said; "but out here you are a different person from the lady of your cloisters. Yet nothing has happened to make you different—nothing, except that we are in the open."
"Nothing? O thou wise one!" mocked Raquel. "But a star shone out, and its rays bewitch people sometimes, when it shines down into the heart until the radiance there is too great for one little bosom to hold; and it trembles to the lips, and all the eager longings of the world are understood, and one feels very, very close to one's own soul; and one feels that just beyond that star, or just beyond the bend of the trail up here, one might find it. So, let us ride hard and fast, my Anita,—I to my bewitched fancies, and you to your lover."
"And I—I thought you did not understand!" muttered Ana. "That was because never before have I seen you without the hedges of people about you. God forgive Rafael Arteaga, who has known and ridden away!"
"Hush!" said Raquel; "our outer world is on the other side of the aliso tree. That is our plaza, and this the inner court. Life itself has the same divisions: all the world may cross the plaza, but the inner court of one's own soul is the sanctuary, where only one may kneel beside us; it is the tabernacle of the heart, and no word of Church or your own will can give to anyone the key, or—Santa Maria!—take it out of the hands to which it is given by divine right!"
"Raquel, beloved!" cried Ana, in dismay, "you are not laughing at me now. You make my heart ache with your words and your smile,—more with the smile, I think. And what you say is—is almost sacrilege. No Spanish mother teaches her daughter that the sacrament of the Church is not, above all things, binding. Those who break it are taught the sin of it."
"But I had no Spanish mother to teach me; only a priest and an old Indian woman. The nuns never spoke of the worldly ties, they were so sure I should never know them."