"You believed in that?" asked the priest in a low voice, and immediately he saw the boy's eyes look upward, so glorious with the light of faith and wonder that instinctively he lowered his own to hide the dark shadow that rested on his soul.
"Only, when we are children we think in one way and everything looks great and beautiful to us," continued Paul, much disturbed, "but when we are grown up things look different. One must reflect very carefully before undertaking anything important so that one may not come to repent afterwards."
"I shall not repent, I'm sure," said the boy with decision. "Have you repented? No, and neither shall I repent."
Paul lifted up his eyes: again he felt that he held in his hands the soul of this child, to mould it like wax, and that a few careless touches might deform it for ever. And again he feared and was silent.
All this time the woman behind the bar had listened quietly, but now the priest's words began to cause her a certain uneasiness. She opened a drawer in front of her, wherein she kept her money, and the cornelian rings and the brooches and mother-of-pearl ornaments pledged by the village women in return for small loans; and evil thoughts flashed through the darkest recesses of her mind, like those forlorn trinkets at the bottom of her drawer.
"The priest is afraid that Antiochus will turn him out of his parish some time or other," she was thinking, "or else he is in need of money and is working off his bad temper first. Now he'll be asking for a loan."
She closed the drawer softly and resumed her tranquil demeanour. She always sat there in silence and never took part in the discussions between her customers, even though invited to give her opinion, especially if they were playing cards. Thus she left her little Antiochus to face his adversary by himself.
"How is it possible not to believe?" said the boy, between awe and excitement. "Nina Masia was possessed, wasn't she? Why, I myself felt the devil inside her shaking her like a wolf in a cage. And it was nothing but the words of the Gospel spoken by you that set her free!"
"That is true, the Word of God can achieve all things," admitted the priest. Then suddenly he rose from his seat.
Was he going? Antiochus gazed at him in consternation.