loving God, who lives in the beautiful sky, above the clouds, my
darling, beyond the sun!"

But Carmen's kind eyes were full of tears; and the child read
their meaning. He who teareth off the Mask of the Flesh had
looked into her face one unutterable moment:--she had seen the
brutal Truth, naked to the bone!

Yet there came to her a little thrill of consolation, caused by
the words of the tender falsehood; for that which she had
discerned by day could not explain to her that which she saw
almost nightly in her slumber. The face, the voice, the form
of her loving mother still lived somewhere,--could not have
utterly passed away; since the sweet presence came to her in
dreams, bending and smiling over her, caressing her, speaking to
her,--sometimes gently chiding, but always chiding with a kiss.
And then the child would laugh in her sleep, and prattle in
Creole,--talking to the luminous shadow, telling the dead mother
all the little deeds and thoughts of the day.... Why would God
only let her come at night?

... Her idea of God had been first defined by the sight of a
quaint French picture of the Creation,--an engraving which
represented a shoreless sea under a black sky, and out of the
blackness a solemn and bearded gray head emerging, and a cloudy
hand through which stars glimmered. God was like old Doctor de
Coulanges, who used to visit the house, and talk in a voice like
a low roll of thunder.... At a later day, when Chita had been
told that God was "everywhere at the same time "--without and
within, beneath and above all things,--this idea became somewhat