of it.  Presently it was gone, and the great ocean lay empty.  The Padre
put his glasses in his lap.  For a short while he read in his breviary,
but soon forgot it again.  He looked at the flowers and sunny ridges, then
at the huge blue triangle of sea which the opening of the hills let into
sight.  "Paradise," he murmured, "need not hold more beauty and peace.  But
I think I would exchange all my remaining years of this for one sight
again of Paris or Seville.  May God forgive me such a thought!" 

Across the unstirred fragrance of oleanders the bell for vespers began to
ring.  Its tones passed over the Padre as he watched the sea in his
garden.  They reached his parishioners in their adobe dwellings near by.
The gentle circles of sound floated outward upon the smooth, immense
silence--over the vines and pear-trees; down the avenues of the olives;
into the planted fields, whence women and children began to return; then
out of the lap of the valley along the yellow uplands, where the men that
rode among the cattle paused, looking down like birds at the map of their
home.  Then the sound widened, faint, unbroken, until it met Temptation in
the guise of a youth, riding toward the Padre from the South, and cheered
the steps of Temptation's jaded horse.