Of immemorial descent, with the record in her brain, perhaps, of those ancestors who personified and worshipped the phenomena of nature before the evolution of that first priesthood on the Ganges and the Euphrates, the Nile and the Indus, she had rare moments of primal exaltation. It is a far cry from those marvellous first societies and the vast orderly and complicated civilization, worshipping mysterious and unseen gods, that followed them, to the Chinigchinich Indians of Alta California; and yet, crushed, conquered, almost blotted out, these remnants, in their very despair, reverted the more closely to nature. The beautiful Carmela was the child of Mission Indians who fled back to their mountain pueblos and savage rites when the power of the priests in California was broken. Every inherited instinct had waged war against the Christianity which, in nine cases out of ten, was pounded into them with a green-hide reata. They called the child Carmela, after the Mission of Carmel, merely because they liked the name; but she grew up a pagan, and a pagan remained during the few years of her life. And she was as pure and good, as loyal and devoted, as any of the women descended from her, heedful of the wild inheritance in their blood lest it poison the strong and bitter tide of New England ancestors. Catalina was the first to feel pride in that alien strain which did so much to distinguish her from the million, and was conscious that she owed to it her faculty to see and feel more in nature than the average Anglo-Saxon. Over, in the almost empty car, lit by a solitary and smoking lamp, listened attentively as she groped her way through the mysterious labyrinths in her brain, expressing herself ill, for she was little used to egotistical ventures. It cannot be said that he understood, being himself a typical product of the extremest civilization that exists in the world to-day; but he saw will-o’-the-wisps in a fog-bank, and thought her more interesting than ever. XIII The train was two hours late. It crawled into the dark little station of Baeza, and Over and Catalina sat down at once in the restaurant, leaving the problem of the night until later. But, hungry as the Englishman was, that problem dulled the flavor of a fair repast. How was he to protect the girl from curiosity and speculation, possibly coarse remark; above all, from self-consciousness? It would be assumed at the inn, as a matter of course, that they were a young couple, and he turned cold as he pictured the landlord conducting them upstairs to the usual room with a bed in each corner. He heartily wished it was he who spoke the Spanish language and that his companion was afflicted with his own distracting ignorance; but he must interpret through her, and to discuss the matter with her beforehand was, to him, impossible. For the first time he wished she were with the Moultons in Alcazar.