"I think she bewitches you each time she comes near you," flashed Ana, resentfully. "On all other things you talk to me sense, but when it is Raquel, my one friend, you talk riddles always, and you make me feel as if I were walking beside her in the dark or blindfold. What is it you mean? That Bryton thinks of her? How could that be, when they have not met? She thought until last night that he was married, so little interest in him has she. How do you get such crazy things in your head?"
"That is true. I find they are crazy things; I confess it to you, and ask you to give no heed to my mistakes."
"It was a mistake, then, that he cared?" persisted Ana. "You were so sure—"
"It was another woman," broke in the priest, curtly. "Oh yes, there was a woman; but I was the fool when I thought I knew who the woman was; that is all."
"And Raquel is not—"
"Raquel Estevan de Arteaga is a woman men should cross themselves when they mention," he said, quietly. "She has a strength in her that is of God or the devil; she brings it from her Indian hills of Mexico, and I for one will be on the safe side and treat it with respect."
"She has bewitched you, that is all," declared Ana; but the man in the priest's robe drew her behind a giant aliso tree and kissed her on the mouth.
"Perhaps so," he agreed; "but, my Anita, it is only enough to make me pity the man she would bewitch in a different way. God! If he knew that she cared like that, his life would be a hell."
"Why not a heaven?" asked Ana, turning to the care of the breakfast. "Raquel spoke beautifully of a love like that last night,—a love in the inner court of life, in sanctuary, where only one other soul could kneel beside one; it was a love spiritual only."
"Only!" said the man, glancing toward the girlish figure in the serape curled against the white bark of the tree. "Only! Anita, girl, let us get the breakfast and leave love to people who have not a price set against their heads. As for that love of the inner court of life, the sanctuary, Raquel still dreams the dreams of a nun. Men and women of California are of flesh and blood, and they do not love in that way."