“No other god! What canst thou mean, my child? For whose altar are those flowers of thine? Every one knows the Christians honour hosts of gods called santos and santas, besides the great goddess, the queen of heaven. But worship whom thou wilt, my treasure, and may all gods comfort thee.” Yupanqui, and indeed every one else, had grown very tender, not to say reverent, towards Sumac, since the great sorrow had fallen upon her life. The girl rose, carefully gathered up the completed flowers, and glided softly from the room. Coyllur seemed to hesitate for a moment whether to follow her; but the attraction of the dreams and aspirations that were being eagerly discussed by her countrymen proved too strong, and she remained. XVII. In the Convent Parlour. “Why should I live? Do I not know The life of woman is full of woe? Toiling on, and on, and on, With breaking heart and tearful eyes, And silent lips, and in the soul The secret longings that arise, Which this world never satisfies! Some more, some less, but of the whole Not one quite happy,—no, not one!” LONGFELLOW. Accompanied by a female attendant, who carried a little basket containing the golden flowers, Sumac crossed the great square, and shortly afterwards entered by a side-door the gardens which had formerly belonged to the Virgins of the Sun, but which were now appropriated to the nuns of Santa Clara. The stately terraces, faced with dark stone, and reaching down to the banks of the Huatanay, had once been adorned with all the flowers of that prolific clime, in their rich variety of form and colouring. And it is said that rarer flowers, silver pale or golden, wrought by the skilful hands of the Virgins of the Sun, mingled with the scarlet salvias, the crimson fuchsias, the variegated calceolarias, and the many-tinted orchids, looking as if they had grown up with them side by side. But now such flowers as these were esteemed too highly—not for the art that fashioned, but for the metal that composed them—to be left exposed to the changes of the elements. The terraces were beginning already to fall into ruin; and while some of the hardier flowers grew luxuriantly in sweet tangled thickets, others had perished, or become poor and scanty, under the less careful hand of the stranger. When they entered the garden, the old Indian domestic resigned her basket to her young mistress, and then sat down on one of the terrace steps to wait, crooning a Quichua song. Sumac slowly climbed the hill to the convent door. Even the short walk had wearied her, and the steep ascent tried her powers still further. Her breath came and went, and two or three times she stopped to rest. Reaching the door at last, she found it open, and entered.