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ing, like the nucleus gleaming in tranquil suspense, within a cell.

“What does he mean,” said Kate, “by ‘We will wait till the Morning Star rises?’”

The man smiled slowly.

“It is a name,” he said.

And he seemed to know no more. But the symbolism had evidently the power to soothe and sustain him.

“Why did he come and speak to us?” asked Kate.

“He is one of those of the god Quetzalcoatl, Señorita.”

“And you? are you one too?”

“Who knows!” said the man, putting his head on one side. Then he added: “I think so. We are many.”

He watched Kate’s face with that gleaming, intense semi-abstraction, a gleam that hung unwavering in his black eyes, and which suddenly reminded Kate of the morning star, or the evening star, hanging perfect between night and the sun.

“You have the morning star in your eyes,” she said to the man.

He flashed her a smile of extraordinary beauty.

“The Señorita understands,” he said.

His face changed again to a dark-brown mask, like semi-transparent stone, and he rowed with all his might. Ahead, the river was widening, the banks were growing lower, down to the water’s level, like shoals planted with willow trees and with reeds. Above the willow trees a square white sail was standing, as if erected on the land.

“Is the lake so near?” said Kate.

The man hastily mopped his running wet face.

“Yes, Señorita! The sailing boats are waiting for the wind, to come into the river. We will pass by the canal.”

He indicated with a backward movement of the head a narrow, twisting passage of water between deep reeds. It made Kate think of the little river Anapo: the same mystery unbroken. The boatman, with creases half of sadness and half of exaltation in his bronze, still face, was pulling with all his might. Water-fowl went swimming into the reeds, or rose on wing and wheeled into the blue air. Some willow trees hung a dripping, vivid green, in the stark dry country. The stream was narrow and winding. With a nonchalant motion, first of the right then of the left hand, Villiers was