She lifted her face again, and heaven had not anything better for me than the depths of those big dark eyes looking into mine.

“Who told you, Eloise?”

The girl looked over her shoulder apprehensively, and lowered her voice as she replied: 

“Marcos Ramero.”

“He’s a liar.  I am awfully alive, and Marcos Ramero knows I am, for he saw me and recognized me down in the Plaza this afternoon,” I declared.

Just then the church door opened and a girl in Mexican dress came out.  I did not see her face, nor notice which way she took, for a priest following her stepped between us.  It was Father Josef.

“My children, come inside.  The holy sanctuary offers you a better shelter than the open street.”

I shall never forget that voice, nor hear another like it.  Inside, the candles were burning dimly at the altar.  The last rays of daylight came through the high south windows, touching the carved old rafters and gray adobe with a red glow.  Long ago human hands, for lack of trowels, had laid that adobe surface on the rough stone—­hands whose imprint is graven still on those crudely dented walls.

We sat down on a low seat inside of the doorway, and Father Josef passed up the aisle to the altar, leaving us there alone.

“Eloise, Marcos Ramero is your friend, and I beg your pardon for speaking of him as I did.”

I resented with all my soul the thought of this girl caring for the son of the man who in some infamous way had wronged Jondo, but I had no right to be rude about him.

“Gail, may I say something to you?” The voice was as a pleading call and the girl’s farce was full of pathos.

“Say on, Little Lees,” was all that I could venture to answer.

“Do you remember the day you came in here and threw Marcos Ramero out of that door?”

“I do,” I replied.

“Would you do it again, if it were necessary?  I mean—­if—­” the voice faltered.

I had heard the same pleading tone on the night of Mat’s wedding when Eloise and Beverly were in the little side porch together.  I looked up at the red light on the old church rafters and the rough gray walls.  How like to those hand-marked walls our memories are, deep-dented by the words they hold forever!  Then I looked down at the girl beside me and I forgot everything else.  Her golden hair, her creamy-white dress, and that rich crimson scarf draped about her shoulders and falling across her knees would have made a Madonna’s model that old Giovanni Cimabue himself would have joyed to copy.

“Is it likely to be necessary?  Be fair with me, Eloise.  I saw you two strolling up that little goat-run of a street out there just now.  Judging from the back of his head, Marcos looked satisfied.  I shouldn’t want to interfere nor make you any trouble,” I said, earnestly.

“It is I who should not make you any trouble, but, oh, Gail, I came here this evening because I was afraid and I didn’t know where else to go, and I found you.  I thought you were dead somewhere out on the Kansas prairie.  Maybe it was to help me a little that you came here to-night.”