Ramón unlocked the church doors and flung them open. The men in front of the crowd kneeled down suddenly, seeing the church dark like a cavern, but a trembling blaze of many candles, away, seemingly far down the mysterious darkness, shuddering with dark, rippling flame, like the Presence of the burning bush.
The crowd swayed and rustled, and subsided, kneeling. Only here and there a labourer, a chauffeur or a railway man stood erect.
The priest raised his hand a little higher, returning towards the people.
“My children,” he said; and as he spoke the lake seemed to rustle; “God the Almighty has called home His Son, and the Holy Mother of the Son. Their days are over in Mexico. They go back to the Father.
“Jesus, the Son of God, bids you farewell.
Mary, the Mother of God, bids you farewell.
For the last time they bless you, as they leave you.
Answer Adios!
Say Adios! my children.”
The men in the circle said a deep Adios! And from the soldiers, and from the kneeling crowd, a ragged, muttered, strange repeating of Adios! again and again, like a sort of storm.