"Listen to them," said Juanita suddenly. "They are half asleep. They are not thinking of what they are singing. They are taking snuff surreptitiously behind their hands to keep themselves awake. And it is we, poor wretched schoolgirls and nuns who have to keep the saints in a good humour by attending to every word and being most preposterously devout whether we feel inclined to be or not. No, I will not go into religion. That is certain. Marcos, I would rather marry you than that--if it is necessary." "It is necessary." "But they can have all the money; every real,'" suggested Juanita hopefully. "No; they have tried that way. They cannot do it in these times. The only way they can get the money is for you to go of your own free will into religion and to bequeath of your own free will all your worldly possessions to the Order you join." "Yes, I know," said Juanita. Her spirits had risen every minute. She was gay again now. His presence seemed to restore to her the happy gift of touching life lightly which is of the heart. And the heart knows no age, neither is it subject to the tyranny of years. "Well, I will marry you if there is no help for it. But..." "But..." echoed Marcos. "But of course it is only a sort of game, is it not?" "Yes," he answered. "A sort of game." "Promise?" "I promise." They were sitting on the steps of one of the chapels. Juanita swung round and peered through the railings as if to see what Saint had his habitation there. "It is only St. Bartholomew," she said, airily. "But he will do. You have promised, remember that. And St. Bartholomew has heard you. It is only to save me from being a nun that we are being married. And I am to be just the same as I am now. We can go fishing, I mean, as we used to, and climb the mountains and have jokes just as we always do in the holidays." "Yes," said Marcos. She held out her hand as she had seen the peasants in Torre Garda when they had struck a bargain and would seal it irrevocably. "Touch it," she said with a gay laugh, as she had heard them say. And they shook hands in the dark cloisters. "There is a window at the end of the passage in which is your room," said Marcos. "It looks out on to a small courtyard and is quite near the ground. Come to that window to-morrow night at ten o'clock and I shall be there." "What for?" she asked. "To be married," he answered. "My father and I will arrange it. We shall both be there. If you do not come to-morrow night I shall come again the next night. You will be back in your room by half-past eleven." "Married?" asked Juanita. "Yes." He had risen and was standing in front of her. "And now you must go back to the Cathedral." "But Sor Teresa's breviary?" "She has it in her pocket," said Marcos. CHAPTER XV