A cold rage filled her as she realized what Raquel could mean to men if she cared. It would be as it was when they met first on the hill, always she would hold the middle of the road, if she was aroused to care. Up to that moment there had been a wild fancy of perhaps sailing away alone with the hastily gathered coin, and of stopping at no port for Rafael. She was half afraid of him and after all what could he do if she did elude him like that? But the sight of Raquel and her little court of admirers changed all that. The proud eyes should know all the humiliation one woman could cause another--all! She looked for Rafael; at once she would tell him,--now, while the glory of the Mexican opal eclipsed the woman of the royal pearls! She was blind with anger to every other thing. But he had not yet appeared. He was dressing, and a gentleman came to claim her for a dance. The guitars were already sending harmonies through the open doors, and the people were gathering thick along the western corridors. The rest of the plaza and the inner court were deserted. Not even a pair of lovers strayed from the crowd as yet. Later, when the moon came up, they would gather courage, but the shadows of the corridors seemed eerie retreats at night to any but souls oblivious to the world. It was not night yet. The first star glimmered in the western sky, and to the east a soft radiance over San Juan Mountain marked the path where the moon would come. In the warm dusk the woman with the opal fires of Mexico in her heart slipped away from the gay groups and through the stillness of the padres' garden, under the sculptured face and serpent, and then to the place of the altar, where the shadows were always softest. She came swiftly, silently; she had an odd feeling of being followed by his thoughts. The altar was the one place of refuge surely--the altar! But it was not. He stood there leaning against the pillar. She carried a tiny candle and a rosary. He watched her light other candles in the niche, thus outlining the carved saint with the long hair over her shoulders, and the draperies of crimson. Flowers were there, blood-red roses, and he saw it all in the soft glimmer of the candles; then, as she was about to kneel before them, he strode forward and caught her arm. The golden rosary fell on the tiled floor between them, and she placed her other hand over his, in mute appeal. "You shall not kneel at that altar," he commanded, his voice scarcely raised above a whisper; "that much of you belongs to me. I will not go away from you with that memory of you in my mind; I will not!" She was trembling, and dared not lift her eyes. "You should not have touched me," she said, brokenly. "All those hours on the hill I did not touch you even once. Must the two of us be weaker than one?"