“It is truly beautiful here,” she admitted, and had Ignacio possessed a tithe of that sympathetic comprehension which his eyes lied about he would have detected a little note of eagerness in her voice, would have guessed that she was lonely and craved human companionship.  “I have been sitting here an hour or two.  You are not going to send me away, are you?”

Ignacio looked properly horrified.

“If I saw an angel here in the garden, senorita,” he exclaimed, “would I say zape to it?  No, no, senorita; here you shall stay a thousand years if you wish.  I swear it.”

He was all sincerity; Ignacio Chavez would no sooner think of being rude to a beautiful young woman than of crying “Scat!” to an angel.  But as to staying here a thousand years . . . she glanced through the tangle of the garden to the tiny graveyard and shook her head.

“You have just come to San Juan?” he asked.  “To-day?”

“Yes,” she told him.  “On the stage at noon.”

“You have friends here?”

Again she shook her head.

“Ah,” said Ignacio.  He straightened for a brief instant and she could see how the chest under his shirt inflated.  “A tourist.  You have heard of this garden, maybe?  And the bells?  So you travelled across the desert to see?”

The third time she shook her head.

“I have come to live here,” she returned quietly.

“But not all alone, senorita!”

“Yes.”  She smiled at him again.  “All alone.”

“Mother of God!” he said within himself.  And presently to her:  “I did not see the stage come to-day; in San Juan one takes his siesta at that hour.  And it is not often that the stage brings new people from the railroad.”

In some subtle way he had made of his explanation an apology.  While his slow brown fingers rolled a cigarette he stared away through the garden and across the desert with an expression half melancholy, half merely meditative, which made the girl wonder what his thoughts were.  When she came to know him better she would know too that at times like this he was not thinking at all.

“I believe this is the most profoundly peaceful place in the world,” she said quietly, half listlessly setting into words the impression which had clung about her throughout the long, still day.  “It is like a strange dream-town, one sees no one moving about, hears nothing.  It is just a little sad, isn’t it?”

He had followed her until the end, comprehending.  But sad?  How that?  It was just as it should be; to ears which had never been filled with the noises or rushing trains and cars and all of the traffic of a city, what sadness could there be in the very natural calm of the rim of the desert?  Having no satisfactory reply to make, Ignacio merely muttered, “Si, senorita,” somewhat helplessly and let it go with that.

“Tell me,” she continued, sitting up a little and seeming to throw off the oppressively heavy spell of her environment, “who are the important people hereabouts?”