its great mossy bowl, which stood like a goblet among water hyacinths and lilies.
The little candle-bearers appeared suddenly in the door, released with their blazing tapers from the room where Doña Magdalena had held them in readiness. Gertrudis dropped to her knees; the little girls ranged beside her, two a pace or two ahead, two a distance behind. They were dressed in white; their feet were bare. White ribbons were bound around their foreheads and smooth black hair.
Gertrudis remained a little while as she had knelt, her head bowed. Along the edge of the vineyard her humble friends were strewing the rose-leaves of their ardent prayers in the way her knees, bared to this act of devotional appeal, must pass.
A little sigh sounded, a faint, soft gasp, from the breasts of those dark, grave watchers when Gertrudis lifted her face, her head thrown back a little as if she looked into heaven, and began her painful march. Her fair hair was drawn back smoothly, every joyous ripple of it pressed down and bound by the white ribbon that circled her forehead. It was a broad ribbon, worn after the fashion of the Indian girls on fiesta days. In the center of it, just between Gertrudis' eyes, there was a silver star.
Doña Magdalena closed her door without a sound. She came and stood in the center of the arcade like a sentinel, seeming to say that none was to follow the slow little procession, no matter how hard sympathy might urge. Gertrudis passed on, clasped hands pressed to her breast in attitude of appeal, her
