He raised his hands.
She frowned.
His hands fell and her smiles came again.
BOOK II—TWO UNKNOWNS
CHAPTER ONE
THE YOUNGER
It is necessary to go back some years prior to the time of the typhoon through whose swirl of devastation two priests from the French Mission of Yingching had struggled and survived, in order that by some knowledge of their past, though it is extremely meagre, a better understanding may be had of the events concerning which this book is written.
Whether the brilliant crepuscular rays from the western sky, the darkness with its labyrinthian uncertainty, the mangling crunch of the wind, the conflagration of the heavens, the crucifix, chaos, then the calm sun of noonday are only symbolic of these priests’ lives, or has in it a more material prognostication of their future, cannot be judged until the last words have been written.
Concerning the early life of these two priests nothing is known of the old man and but little of the youth prior to the time with which this book deals, although it is said that the younger priest came from Bretagne, first from an old ruin called the Château Carhaix-sur-Mer, then from a monastery at St. Pol de Leon, which knowledge is important in explaining his melancholy seclusiveness, his endless meditation: for this melancholy silence of the Bretons comes with their land, a gift of the Sorrow of God.
The Château Carhaix-sur-Mer in which this Breton priest spent his childhood stands on the edge of a ravine that runs through a moorland lying between a stretch of woods and the cliffs. The town of Lanilis is south of it; Plouzevede and Lesneven are to the eastward, while Plouneur-Trez is north.
The sea along this coast is safest when it frowns and most dangerous when it smiles.