“Do you know,” said Lucile a few moments later as she sipped a cup of hot chocolate and nibbled at a wafer, “I peeped into that room in the old Mission yesterday. The shutter had been replaced but I could see through the cracks. There really wasn’t anything on the table. The candles and crucifix were there, but nothing on the old table—not anything at all. I—I must just have imagined that face.”
“I’m not so sure,” said Florence mysteriously.
“Oh!” exclaimed Lucile suddenly, “You were going to tell me the story that face reminded you of—the story told by an old seaman.”
“I will,” said Florence, “but not to-night. Just look,” she sprang to her feet, “it’s after three o’clock and to-day is already to-morrow.”
CHAPTER VI
THE BLUE GOD
As Florence returned from her lectures the following afternoon she passed across the end of the lagoon.
Once she had found her skate, lost on the previous night, and thrust it into the bag with her books, she glanced up at the ragged giant of a building which lay sleeping there on its blanket of snow. She felt an almost irresistible desire again to enter and roam about its deserted corridors.
Walking to the corner beneath the broken windows, she glanced to the right and left of her, allowed her gaze to sweep the horizon, then, seeing no one who might observe her actions, she sprang upon the edge of the wall, scaled the grating with the agility of a squirrel, tumbled over the upper window sill and found herself once more inside.
In spite of the fact that it was now broad daylight and would be for an hour, she found her heart fluttering painfully. The experiences of the previous night were all too freshly burned on the tissues of her brain.
As she tiptoed down the balcony, then dropped from step to step to the main floor below, the unpleasant sensations left her. She found herself walking, as she had some years before as a child, in the midst of a throng, exclaiming at every newly discovered monster or thing of delicate beauty. The treasures had long since been removed to newer and more magnificent quarters, but the memory of them lingered.