At the door of the Arcade Dylar took leave.
“I am sure that you will not go to the assembly this evening,” he said, “and I shall not go. Rest yourself well, and to-morrow I will take you to hear one of our story-tellers. To-night I—I want to remember!”
He murmured the words lowly as he lifted her from the saddle, and she answered them with a little half sigh. She also wanted to remember.
Supper was over; and she and Elena had theirs alone in the dining-room, talking quietly over their journey.
“You are happy, child?” Elena asked.
“I never dreamed of being so happy!” Tacita answered. And they looked into each other’s eyes, and understood.
Going to the salon, they found Iona waiting there.
“I suppose that you are not going to the assembly to-night,” she said. “But I hope that you are not too tired to tell me how you like the Olives.”
“The little glimpse I was allowed was charming. I never saw such verdure. The foliage, the fruit, were in billows, in drifts, in heaps. And how I longed to go to one of those great white houses, and sit on the roof under the palm-shadows. I said to the prince, ‘Why have we no palms in San Salvador?’ and he is going to have some. I thought of the Basilica as a proper site; but he doubted a little. It is not decided. He said, we worship Christ as King, and shrink from holding the impious insult of his martyrdom forever before his eyes. And the palm is for the martyr. But the palms will grow somewhere, and will be my special garden; and the first person who dies in the effort to serve or save San Salvador shall be carried to his grave with a waving of palm branches, and a song of hosannas, and a palm-leaf shall be entombed with him, and one cut in the marble that bears his name. For that, I would almost wish to die a martyr.”
“For that?” said Iona coldly. “The martyr, I fancy, is not thinking of the crown when he throws his life into the breach.”