newness of the morning. Outside her window the women were passing quietly, the red water-jar on one shoulder, going to the lake for water. They always put one arm over their head, and held the jar on the other shoulder. It had a contorted look, different from the proud way the women carried water in Sicily.
“Niña! Niña!” Juana was crying outside.
“Wait a minute,” said Kate.
It was another of the hymn-sheets, with a Hymn of Quetzalcoatl.
“See, Niña, the new hymn from last evening.”
Kate took the leaflet and sat upon her bed to read it.
Quetzalcoatl Looks Down on Mexico.
Kate read this long leaflet again, and again, and a swift darkness like a whirlwind seemed to envelop the morning. She drank her coffee on the verandah, and the heavy papayas in their grouping seemed to be oozing like great drops from the invisible spouting of the fountain of non-human life. She seemed to see the great sprouting and urging of the cosmos, moving into weird life. And men only like green-fly clustering on the tender tips, an aberration there. So monstrous the rolling and unfolding of the life of the cosmos, as if even iron could grow like lichen deep in the earth, and cease growing, and prepare to perish. Iron and stone render up their life, when the hour comes. And men are less than the green-fly sucking the stems of the bush, so long as they live by business and bread alone. Parasites on the face of the earth.
She strayed to the shore. The lake was blue in the morning light, the opposite mountains pale and