"Stay here under your care?" he asked. "It would do me no good, Padre. Temptation sticks closer to me than a brother!" and he gave that laugh of his which had disarmed severer judges than his host. "By next week I should have introduced some sin or other into your beautiful Garden of Ignorance here. It will be much safer for your flock if I go and join the other serpents at San Francisco." Soon after breakfast the Padre had his two mules saddled, and he and his guest set forth down the hills together to the shore. And, beneath the spell and confidence of pleasant, slow riding and the loveliness of everything, the young man talked freely of himself. "And, seriously," said he, "if I missed nothing else at Santa Ysabel, I should long for--how shall I say it?--for insecurity, for danger, and of all kinds--not merely danger to the body. Within these walls, beneath these sacred bells, you live too safe for a man like me." "Too safe!" These echoed words upon the lips of the pale Padre were a whisper too light, too deep, for Gaston's heedless ear. "Why," the young man pursued in a spirit that was but half levity, "though I yield often to temptation, at times I have resisted it, and here I should miss the very chance to resist. Your garden could never be Eden for me, because temptation is absent from it." "Absent!" Still lighter, still deeper, was this whisper that the Padre breathed. "I must find life," exclaimed Gaston, "and my fortune at the mines, I hope. I am not a bad fellow, Father. You can easily guess all the things I do. I have never, to my knowledge, harmed any one. I didn't even try to kill my adversary in an affair of honor. I gave him a mere flesh-wound, and by this time he must be quite recovered. He was my friend. But as he came between me--" Gaston stopped, and the Padre, looking keenly at him, saw the violence that he had noticed in church pass like a flame over the young man's handsome face. "That's nothing dishonorable," said Gaston, answering the priest's look. And then, because this look made him not quite at his ease: "Perhaps a priest might feel obliged to say it was dishonorable. She and her father were--a man owes no fidelity before he is--but you might say that had been dishonorable." "I have not said so, my son." "I did what every gentleman would do." insisted Gaston. "And that is often wrong!" said the Padre, gently and gravely. "But I'm not your confessor." "No," said Gaston, looking down. "And it is all over. It will not begin again. Since leaving New Orleans I have traveled an innocent journey straight to you. And when I make my fortune I shall be in a position to return and--" "Claim the pressed flower?" suggested the Padre. He did not smile. "Ah, you remember how those things are!" said Gaston: and he laughed and blushed. "Yes," said the Padre, looking at the anchored barkentine, "I remember how those things are."