For a moment neither spoke. The lucent gaze confronting him seemed to Gordon to possess a strange familiarity: it was the same expression of unworldly sincerity that had shone in those London days from Dallas’ face.
“What do you seek, my son?”
Perhaps the friar had already had time to study the visitor. Perchance the clear scrutiny had read something beneath that cryptic look bent upon the shrine. What did he not seek, indeed!
When Gordon answered it was simply, in Italian as direct as the other’s question.
“The peace of your walls and fields drew me, Padre. By your leave, I would rest a while here.”
The friar’s look had not wavered. Contemplation teaches one much. It was easy to read the lines of dissipation, of evil indulgence, that marked the white face before him; but the padre saw further to the soul-sickness beneath.
“We are Armenians, Signore,” he proffered, “a community of students, who have poor entertainment; but to such as we have, the stranger is welcome. He who comes to us stays without question and fares forth again at his own will.”
As he spoke, a bell’s clear, chilly chime rose from somewhere within the walls. At the note the padre turned, bowed his knee before the leaden Virgin, and rising, with arm raised toward the lagoon, blessed the waters and the land. Then he held out his hand to Gordon.
“I am Padre Sukias Somalian,” he said. “I will go and inform the prior. I will call you presently.”
He disappeared through the wall-gate.