‘Has anything happened to Esteban?’
The priest did not answer at once, but paused, reflecting, and dusting his sleeve, where there was always some snuff requiring attention at such moments.
‘I know so little,’ he said. ‘I am no politician. What can I say? What can I advise you when I am in the dark? And the time is slipping by—slipping by.’
‘I cannot tell you,’ she answered, turning away and looking out of the window.
‘You cannot tell the priest—tell the man.’
Then, suddenly, she reached the end of her endurance. Standing with her back towards him, she told her story, and Concha listened with a still, breathless avidity as one who, having long sought knowledge, finds it at last when it seemed out of reach. The little fountain plashed in the courtyard below; a frog in the basin among the water-lilies croaked sociably while the priest and the beautiful woman in the room above made history. For it is not only in kings’ palaces nor yet in Parliaments that the story of the world is shaped.
Concha spoke no word, and Julia, having begun, left nothing unsaid, but told him every detail in a slow mechanical voice, as if bidden thereto by a stronger will than her own.
‘He is all the world to me,’ she said simply, in conclusion.
‘Yes; and the happiest women are those who live in a small world.’
A silence fell upon them. The old priest surreptitiously looked at his watch. He was essentially a man of action.