“I know, I know,” her whisper was constrained. “Do you?”
He shook his head.
“Do you wish to?”
He could scarcely hear and did not at all understand, so he made no answer and the questioning in his eyes did not change.
“Rest your ear here,” she whispered, putting her little finger through the crevice.
He hesitated for a moment, then in the manner of a boy pressed his ear tightly to the crevice. For a moment there was perfect stillness, then a hurried, alarmed fluttering of silk.
Presently far from the screen he heard the wife strike her hands softly, nervously together.
“You must go,” she cried, her voice trembling. “Please don’t stand there.”
But before the Breton left that afternoon the dusk of a monsoon storm had darkened the rooms and as he passed through the park masses of clouds as black as the night-sea rushed along across the sky like enormous billows frothed with a grey foam. The narrow streets were filled with hurrying men; shopkeepers were putting up shutters, and barring doors; hucksters ceased their cries; itinerant barbers, money-changers, and fortune-tellers were hastily, silently departing. Sentries left their posts; mothers screamed after wayward brats; beggars sought the shelter of temples, and the chant of the blind was still.
The Breton, instead of returning to the Mission, went as swiftly as possible through the tortuous streets to the East Gate, thence made his way toward their outer edge, where a small Catholic community lived, almost buried under the tumbled side of this vast, old brick-heap—a plastered chip from the Rock of St. Peter.