Ever since then, all the most important events in his own history had occurred in the blessed month when this sinful and sullied world puts on white as if to commemorate the Annunciation, and becomes, for a little, lovely enough to be in truth the Bride of Christ. It was in May that he had been given grace to perform the hardest act of his life; to leave his country, to part from his dear sister and his father (under what sad circumstances!), and to start for the New World to take up a missionary's labours. That parting was not a parting, but an escape--a running away, a betrayal of family trust for the sake of a higher trust. He could smile at it now, but at the time it had been terrible enough. The Bishop, thinning carrots yonder, would remember. It was because of what Father Latour had been to him in that hour, indeed, that Father Joseph was here in a garden in Santa Fé. He would never have left his dear Sandusky when the newly appointed Bishop asked him to share his hardships, had he not said to himself: "Ah, now it is he who is torn by perplexity! I will be to him now what he was to me that day when we stood by the road-side, waiting for the _diligence_ to Paris, and my purpose broke, and he saved me." That time came back upon Father Vaillant now so keenly that he wiped a little moisture from his eyes,--(he was quickly moved, after the way of sick people) and he cleared his glasses and called: "Father Latour, it is time for you to rest your back. You have been stooping over a great while." The Bishop came and sat down in a wheelbarrow that stood at the edge of the arbour. "I have been thinking that I shall no longer pray for your speedy recovery, Joseph. The only way I can keep my Vicar within call is to have him sick." Father Joseph smiled. "You are not in Santa Fé a great deal yourself, my Bishop." "Well, I shall be here this summer, and I hope to keep you with me. This year I want you to see my lotus flowers. Tranquilino will let the water into my lake this afternoon." The lake was a little pond in the middle of the garden, into which Tranquilino, clever with water, like all Mexicans, had piped a stream from the Santa Fé creek flowing near at hand. "Last summer, while you were away," the Bishop continued, "we had more than a hundred lotus blossoms floating on that little lake. And all from five bulbs that I put into my valise in Rome." "When do they blossom?" "They begin in June, but they are at their best in July." "Then you must hurry them up a little. For with my Bishop's permission, I shall be gone in July." "So soon? And why?"