all-forgiving mother, he had found one sweet woman to console him

with her tender words, her loving lips, her delicious caress.
She had given him Zouzoune, the darling link between their

lives,--Zouzoune, who waited each evening with black Eglantine at
the gate to watch for his coming, and to cry through all the

house like a bird, "Papa, lape vini!--papa Zulien ape vini!" ...
And once that she had made him very angry by upsetting the ink

over a mass of business papers, and he had slapped her (could he
ever forgive himself?)--she had cried, through her sobs of

astonishment and pain:--"To laimin moin?--to batte moin!" (Thou
lovest me?--thou beatest me!) Next month she would have been five

years old. To laimin moin?--to batte moin! ...
A furious paroxysm of grief convulsed him, suffocated him; it

seemed to him that something within must burst, must break. He
flung himself down upon his bed, biting the coverings in order to

stifle his outcry, to smother the sounds of his despair. What
crime had he ever done, oh God! that he should be made to suffer

thus?--was it for this he had been permitted to live? had been
rescued from the sea and carried round all the world unscathed?

Why should he live to remember, to suffer, to agonize? Was not
Ramirez wiser?

How long the contest within him lasted, he never knew; but ere it
was done, he had become, in more ways than one, a changed man.

For the first,--though not indeed for the last time,--something
of the deeper and nobler comprehension of human weakness and of

human suffering had been revealed to him,--something of that
larger knowledge without which the sense of duty can never be

fully acquired, nor the understanding of unselfish goodness, nor
the spirit of tenderness. The suicide is not a coward; he is an

egotist.
A ray of sunlight touched his wet pillow,--awoke him. He rushed

to the window, flung the latticed shutters apart, and looked out.
Something beautiful and ghostly filled all the

vistas,--frost-haze; and in some queer way the mist had
momentarily caught and held the very color of the sky. An azure

fog! Through it the quaint and checkered street--as yet but half
illumined by the sun,--took tones of impossible color; the view

paled away through faint bluish tints into transparent
purples;--all the shadows were indigo. How sweet the

morning!--how well life seemed worth living! Because the sun had
shown his face through a fairy veil of frost! ...

Who was the ancient thinker?--was it Hermes?--who said:--
"The Sun is Laughter; for 'tis He who maketh joyous the thoughts

of men, and gladdeneth the infinite world." ...
The Shadow of the Tide.

I.
Carmen found that her little pet had been taught how to pray; for

each night and morning when the devout woman began to make her
orisons, the child would kneel beside her, with little hands

joined, and in a voice sweet and clear murmur something she had
learned by heart. Much as this pleased Carmen, it seemed to her

that the child's prayers could not be wholly valid unless uttered
in Spanish;--for Spanish was heaven's own tongue,--la lengua de

Dios, el idioma de Dios; and she resolved to teach her to say the
Salve Maria and the Padre Nuestro in Castilian--also, her own

favorite prayer to the Virgin, beginning with the words, "Madre
santisima, toda dulce y hermosa." . . .

So Conchita--for a new name had been given to her with that
terrible sea christening--received her first lessons in Spanish;

and she proved a most intelligent pupil. Before long she could
prattle to Feliu;--she would watch for his return of evenings,

and announce his coming with "Aqui viene mi papacito?"--she
learned, too, from Carmen, many little caresses of speech to

greet him with. Feliu's was not a joyous nature; he had his dark
hours, his sombre days; yet it was rarely that he felt too sullen

to yield to the little one's petting, when she would leap up to
reach his neck and to coax his kiss, with--"Dame un beso,

papa!--asi;--y otro! otro! otro!" He grew to love her like his
own;--was she not indeed his own, since he had won her from

death? And none had yet come to dispute his claim. More and
more, with the passing of weeks, months, seasons, she became a

portion of his life--a part of all that he wrought for. At the
first, he had had a half-formed hope that the little one might be

reclaimed by relatives generous and rich enough to insist upon
his acceptance of a handsome compensation; and that Carmen could

find some solace in a pleasant visit to Barceloneta. But now he
felt that no possible generosity could requite him for her loss;

and with the unconsciousselfishness of affection, he commenced
to dread her identification as a great calamity.

It was evident that she had been brought up nicely. She had
pretty prim ways of drinking and eating, queer little fashions of

sitting in company, and of addressing people. She had peculiar
notions about colors in dress, about wearing her hair; and she

seemed to have already imbibed a small stock of social prejudices
not altogether in harmony with the republicanism of Viosca's

Point. Occasional swarthy visitors,--men of the Manilla
settlements,--she spoke of contemptuously as negues-marrons; and

once she shocked Carmen inexpressibly by stopping in the middle
of her evening prayer, declaring that she wanted to say her

prayers to a white Virgin; Carmen's Senora de Guadalupe was only
a negra! Then, for the first time, Carmen spoke so crossly to

the child as to frighten" target="_blank" title="vt.吓唬，使惊惧">frighten her. But the pious woman's heart smote
her the next moment for that first harsh word;--and she caressed

the motherless one, consoled her, cheered her, and at last
explained to her--I know not how--something very wonderful about

the little figurine, something that made Chita's eyes big with
awe. Thereafter she always regarded the Virgin of Wax as an

object mysterious and holy.
And, one by one, most of Chita's little eccentricities were

gradually eliminated from her developing life and thought. More
rapidly than ordinary children, because singularly intelligent,

she learned to adapt herself to all the changes of her new
environment,--retaining only that indescribable something which

to an experienced eye tells of hereditaryrefinement of habit and
of mind:--a natural grace, a thorough-bred ease and elegance of

movement, a quickness and delicacy of perception.
She became strong again and active--active enough to play a great

deal on the beach, when the sun was not too fierce; and Carmen
made a canvasbonnet to shield her head and face. Never had she

been allowed to play so much in the sun before; and it seemed to
do her good, though her little bare feet and hands became brown

as copper. At first, it must be confessed, she worried her
foster-mother a great deal by various queer misfortunes and

extraordinary freaks;--getting bitten by crabs, falling into the
bayou while in pursuit of "fiddlers," or losing herself at the

conclusion of desperate efforts to run races at night with the
moon, or to walk to the "end of the world." If she could only

once get to the edge of the sky, she said, she "could climb up."
She wanted to see the stars, which were the souls of good little

children; and she knew that God would let her climb up. "Just
what I am afraid of!"--thought Carmen to herself;--"He might let

her climb up,--a little ghost!" But one day naughty Chita
received a terrible lesson,--a lasting lesson,--which taught her

the value of obedience.
She had been particularly cautioned not to venture into a certain

part of the swamp in the rear of the grove, where the weeds were
very tall; for Carmen was afraid some snake might bite the child.

But Chita's bird-bright eye had discerned a gleam of white in
that direction; and she wanted to know what it was. The white

could only be seen from one point, behind the furthest house,
where the ground was high. "Never go there," said Carmen; "there

is a Dead Man there,--will bite you!" And yet, one day, while
Carmen was unusually busy, Chita went there.