"Hush!" said Raquel; "our outer world is on the other side of the aliso tree. That is our plaza, and this the inner court. Life itself has the same divisions: all the world may cross the plaza, but the inner court of one's own soul is the sanctuary, where only one may kneel beside us; it is the tabernacle of the heart, and no word of Church or your own will can give to anyone the key, or--Santa Maria!--take it out of the hands to which it is given by divine right!" "Raquel, beloved!" cried Ana, in dismay, "you are not laughing at me now. You make my heart ache with your words and your smile,--more with the smile, I think. And what you say is--is almost sacrilege. No Spanish mother teaches her daughter that the sacrament of the Church is not, above all things, binding. Those who break it are taught the sin of it." "But I had no Spanish mother to teach me; only a priest and an old Indian woman. The nuns never spoke of the worldly ties, they were so sure I should never know them." "But, Raquelita, you rode gladly north to Rafael; you--" "Yes; I was more a devotee than I ever shall be again," acknowledged Raquel, with a sigh. "I remember the elated, half-dreamlike way in which I rode over those mesas to meet him. I was riding to help to guard a wonderful soul and a wonderful life for the Church. I was upheld by the conviction that God desired it. If, instead of asking me to marry a husband for the good of a soul, they had asked me to ride my horse into the sea and wait for the rising tide, and given as convincing a churchly reason, I should have ridden into the sea and waited, I suppose. It is bad for one when the dreams go, and the clear vision begins." "But Rafael--" "Rafael, beloved, is contented with the life of the plaza. He will always be; and--the inner court is forever this side of the aliso tree. Come! The stars are thick now, and if we have far to ride--" Dona Ana untied the mule and the mustang. "I think they will follow; but it is best, perhaps, to keep a rope on the mustang. I will lead him, and I have a bell I will tie later to his neck; it may help in the dark if we should go wide of the trail." The wilder mood of Raquel in the great out-of-doors, where she became something besides the girl of the cloisters, had a sobering effect on Ana herself. A girl who would sacrifice herself through a temporary religious fervor was not one to look with favor on any sacrifice or risk for heretics. Again and again she thought of the letter to the Americano on which that message had been pencilled. She thought also of the words of friendship uttered by Padre Libertad for the same American, at the San Joaquin ranch. Was it that the latter was dead, and thus his letters accessible? Or was there a chance that the man whom Don Eduardo and his guests were to start in search of was held either by a friend or an enemy in the hills they were riding to?