"How I wish I had known you there at--at the Gila, Pancha," he managed to say in slow, stumbling Spanish. "Do you know we made a great mistake, Mr. Blake and I?" She did not wish to know. Two little hands went up imploringly, the dark head drooped lower still, the slender, girlish form was surely trembling. What ailed the child? It was time to go, yet he lingered. He felt a longing to take her hands again--clasped in each other now, and hanging listless as she leaned against the window casing. He meant to bend and kiss her good-by, just as he would have kissed a younger sister, he said to himself, not as he had kissed Geraldine Allyn. But somehow he faltered, and that was something unusual to Walter Loring. Even at risk of being abrupt, he felt it time to go, but after the manner of weaker men, took out his watch. "Yes, I must go, Pancha. We won't say good-by, will we? It is until to-morrow--_hasta la manana_. You know we always come again to California. You'll be quite a woman, then, though." He who was so brief and reticent with men, found himself prattling with this child, unable to break off. At last, with sudden effort, he seized both her hands in his, where they lay limp and passive. "_Adios_, little one! Dear little friend!" he said, bent swiftly, and his curling brown mustache was crushed one instant against the top of her dusky head. Then he hurried to the lady superior and took his leave, Pancha standing silent at the window until the door had closed behind him.