honour, whose impulses are never founded on human feeling, but on the fear of what others will say, the desire to appear greater and more dignified in the eyes of others than to your own conscience.  For the adulterous wife, death; for the murderer, revenge; for the fugitive daughter, contempt and forgetfulness; this is your gospel.  I have another standard; for the wife who forgets her duties, contempt and oblivion; for that fragment of our own flesh who flies from us, love, support, gentleness, even endeavouring to compass her return to us.  Esteban, we are separated by our beliefs, the gulf of centuries lies between us, but you are my brother, we love each other, and I only desire your good.  I bear the same name of which you are so proud, and I loved our poor parents as much as you could love them, and in the name of all these I tell you that this situation must come to an end; you must not live insensible and frozen in what you call your dignity, without the remembrance of your daughter wandering about the world, troubling you.  You, who are so kind, who have sheltered me in the most difficult crisis of my life, how can you sleep, how can you eat, without your life being embittered by the remembrance of your lost daughter?  What do you know about her now?  May she not be dying of hunger while you eat?  May she not be lying in a hospital while you are living in the home of your fathers?”

Esteban’s brow contracted, and he wore his gloomiest look as he listened to his brother.

“It is useless for you to strive, Gabriel, nothing can come of it.  Have I denied you anything?  Am I not ready to do anything for my brother?  But do not speak to me of that; she has caused me much pain, she has broken my life, how I did not die, I know not.  Have you thought well that for centuries the family of the Lunas have been the mirror of the Cathedral, respected by even the archbishops, and now, suddenly to find oneself among the lowest, exposed to the ridicule of all and looked upon with compassion by the veriest little acolyte!  What I have suffered!  The times I have wept with rage alone in this home, hearing what they were saying behind my back.  And then,” he added quietly as though grief were paralysing his voice, “there was that unhappy martyr who died of shame; my poor wife who left the world so as not to see my grief and the contempt of others!  And do you wish me to forget all this?  For the rest, Gabriel, I cannot express what I feel as well as you do.  But honour—­is honour.  It is to live in my house without fear of being shamed, to sleep at night without fearing to see in the darkness our father’s eyes, asking why I allow a lost woman to live under the same roof that the Lunas won for themselves by centuries of service to the house of God; it is to avoid people mocking at our family.  Let them say, ’Those Lunas! how unfortunate they are,’ but they shall never say the Lunas are a family wanting in shame.  By our love, brother, leave me; do not speak to me of this.  Those evil doctrines have poisoned your mind; not only have you ceased to believe in God, but you have ceased to believe in honour.”