as the rough tiles cut her tender flesh, was free to come. So they came and waited for her to pass, in reverence, in tender sympathy.
That was to be the crowning of her long petition, the culmination of her sacrifice, for the good Don Juan. All hoped that Our Lady would bend low and see.
This low-whispering, sympathetic gathering extended along the open part of the arcade, where the moonlight fell through its airy, rhythmic arches, reproducing them in sharp outline of shadow on the pavement tiles. Well to the front the young women waited, many of them sitting on the pavement edge, their bright garments like gay blossoms along the way.
These were of the third generation since the Indians embraced the Christian faith. In all essentials except blood they were Spanish, and some of them, indeed, were even Spanish in blood, the children of soldiers and other exiles in California who had married Indian wives. Their common language was Spanish, their thoughts were Spanish, molded from infancy by the mission fathers. Two of these girls sat a little apart, close by the pedestal of an arch, as near to Don Geronimo's door as they could draw, as if some dearer bond of sympathy, some closer understanding, gave them the right to be the first to strew their prayers and sighs and heart-deep wishes like sweet flowers in Gertrudis Sinova's path.
