Julie moved on. As she was about to step out, the priest passed her. She stopped him.
“May I ask the name of this church?” she faltered uncertainly. What she wanted to ask was the significance of it all.
A tired shadow crossed the priest’s face. “Saint Francis Xavier’s,” he said. Then he stood and looked about him, and the shadow grew.
“It is beautifully decorated,” Julie ventured.
“It is one of the Christian churches of the Orient,” he said. “Is this the first one you have seen?”
“I only arrived to-day. I am stopping with the Calixters. I am a teacher.” She added this a little proudly.
His manner altered. “The Calixters are friends and parishioners of mine. You are the young lady they told me they were expecting. I am Father Hull.”
Suddenly he made a gesture to the gorgeous mystery about him. “You are not a Catholic? Then this can not break your heart. Did you expect,” he asked, “to find a bonze in here dealing paper prayers?”
Then, with an abrupt change of manner, he asked her about her work. She told him she had no idea where it would be. Everybody over here seemed to be very busy; it would no doubt be real work and hard. She told him naïvely about her old ambition to go as a nun to the Leper Islands.
He shook his head. “I hope,” he said, regarding her with a sudden keen penetration, “that you will not go very far away. I have been a soldier, as well as a priest. I have tramped through the jungles of many of the islands.”