glance at Miguel assured her of a sympathy that was not to be doubted.

And

"I was heartbroken," she went on. "It was not that mine was the only lily. There were plenty of flowers in our garden, and the flower market was full of them. My father would have bought me a sheaf of lilies, but I would have none of them. I had not watched over those and cared for them as I had mine. then-" her voice shook a little, but she steadied it "then, the day after my lily was killed, Antonio came in and found me crying. He tried to comfort me, but he did not understand. Poor Antonio-he really loved me." she said pathetically. "He did not understand. He went out to find me another lily. It was late, and there were no more white lilies in the flower market. But there were yellow ones with dark, reddish spots-tiger lilies. To Antonio a lily was a lily. Perhaps he did not even remember that mine had been white. He brought me the spotted lily."

Miguel looked at her in horror.

"He brought you the spotted lily!" he echoed.

"Yes." said Rafaela evenly. "He did not think that the color would make any difference to me that was what he said. But-to carry that yellow lily to church in place of my pure,

SO

white one; to put the spotted flower on my mother's grave-I could not-no, I could not do it! Then I knew that I had never loved Antonio-and that I could never love him. He said that I would learn to care for him, things went on as before. But I never did, though I tried very hard; for I felt kindly toward him. He loved me very much. But he did not understand. The lily was not the only thing-it was the same with everything else. He could not understand me; I could not love him. We were a sorry misfit," she finished sadly, "yet he truly loved me. He meant to be good to me-poor Antonio."

For a moment neither spoke. Across the pages of Miguel's breviary they looked at each other. She thought: "You would have understood." He thought: "I should have known. I could never have brought you the spotted lily."

Suddenly Rafaela's face grew hot, and she looked away. Seeing this, Miguel felt self-conscious in her presence for the first time. Perhaps each guessed the other's thought-who knows?

Then the door opened, and old Rosa appeared, bearing Miguel's noon meal on a tray. Her coming relieved the situation; but Rafaela did not speak of the lily again that morning.

་

I

CHAPTER XIII.

The Hem of Her Garment

N the house of the lone poplar the days

went by swiftly. May passed into June,

and the coming of summer touched all the hills with brown. On the long veranda Miguel still sat and listened to the linnets in the hedge of oranges, and the noise of horses' feet on the King's Highway. In a few days he would set out again on his journey into Mexico, and Rafaela would be left behind.

Somehow, thought Miguel, they had never been quite the same since the morning when she had told him the story of the lily. That had been a crucial moment for both of them. She knew that he was a man fit for love and war, but he had been dedicated to the priesthood. He knew that she was a woman born to be loved, but he might not tell her so. Subtly enough, these things, known before, were written more largely on the horizon of both man and woman after the story of the lily. Words spoken now held a strange meaning; and each read the other's actions in a different light. And in the days that followed, they

found the fruit of the tree of knowledge both bitter and sweet.

Long before the day came for his departure, Miguel knew that he loved her. The knowledge had not come to him suddenly; he had grown into it slowly, and his conviction was therefore the more sure. And now that he was about to leave her, he knew that his love had begun when he had first caught sight of her under the palm trees at San Diego. Again and again he saw her as she had looked then-slim and straight in her saddle, the gold of the sun in her hair. The embers of Old Desire smouldered no longer; they had flamed into hot fire, and in his soul Miguel knew that many waters could not quench it. For the first time in his life the call of the King's Highway was made plain to him. No longer was it vague and far off, for Rafaela was present with him. She it was who had called him long ago when, as a child, he had stood in the broad trail of the King's Highway below San Juan Capistrano and gazed hungrily into the distance. Though he had not known, and she had not known, it was so. He pictured her as she must have looked then-a little girl in a soft, white dress with the sun in her hair, playing in the courtyard

garden of a

house in the City of Mexico. Then he imagined her lonely and forsaken in the great house when her mother had died. For, though Rafaela had not said it, Miguel knew that her father had been one of those who did not understand. Over the coming of Antonio Terrazzas, Miguel did not linger very long; but tenderly he thought of Rafaela as, a lily herself for purity and beauty, she had wanted to offer a spotless flower to the memory of her mother. Then he burned with indignation at Antonio's stupid blunder. Miguel could never have done such a thing-he would have understood; he loved her more than Antonio ever knew how to love. But he might not tell her so.

An inexpressible pain surged over him as he pondered this. She was his by right—she had been made for him; yet he might not take her for his own. The knowledge was at once sweet and bitter. How he loved her, everything about her-the gold of her dark hair where the aureole of the sun lay across it, the deep pools of her clear eyes, the rich tones of her wonderful voice! He would gladly have laid down his very life for her, yet he might not tell her so! Many times in those last days on the veranda, his soul cried out for him to rise and take her in his arms. If