'It is the Gesu Himself, the Gesu--and I have brought Him to you because now you will believe--and my mother must be well with them in heaven or they never had wrought such a miracle for me--and such a night as I have passed, dear God! such things as I have seen and heard--but the Child smiles--the Child is pleased--and now you will believe in me, though I could not find the magic things--and I said to myself when she sees the Gesu she will believe--and she will be mine--mine--mine! The Lord forgive me, that has been all my thought, though heaven wrought such a miracle for me!' The words poured out of his mouth one over another like the rush of water let loose through a narrow channel. He was blind with his own excess of emotion, his own breathless desire; he did not see the changes which swept over the face of Santina in a tumult of wrath, wonder, fury, eagerness, suspicion, cupidity, as one after another each emotion went coursing through her soul and shining in her eyes, making her beauty distorted and terrible. Her first impulse was fury at his failure to bring her what she wanted; the second was to comprehend in a flash of instantaneous insight the money value of that to which he only attached a spiritual merit. She snatched the image from him, and in the morning light she saw the silver of it glisten through the earth which still in parts clung to it. It might be better, surer, more quick aid to her than the uncertain divining tools whereof she was ignorant of the full employ. Her rapid mind swept over in a second all the uses to which it might be put, and comprehended the superstitious adoration of it which moved Caris and made him control his passion for herself, as he stood gazing at it in her arms, his own hands clasped in prayer, and his whole frame trembling with the portentous sense of the mercy of heaven which had been made manifest to him. She in a second divined that it had been part of some buried treasure which he had by accident disinterred, but she was too keen and wise to let him see that she did so; it was her part to humour and to confirm him in his self-deception. She calmed the angry, gibing words which rose to her lips, she held back the exultant covetousness which flashed in her eyes and betrayed itself in the clutching grasp of her fingers; she gazed on the Gesu with a worship half real, half affected, for it was also a holy image to her, if its sanctity were to her outweighed and outshone by its monetary worth in precious metal. 'Tell me how you found this?' she asked, under her breath, as one almost speechless with awe before such a manifestation from on high. She was really in genuine fear. He had been into precincts which none could enter without offending immortal and unseen powers. He had done it at her bidding. Who could be sure that the offending spirits would not avenge his sacrilege on her? But through her fears she kept her hold upon the image, whilst she asked the question.