"Ah, you remember how those things are!" said Gaston: and he laughed and blushed.
"Yes," said the Padre, looking at the anchored barkentine, "I remember how those things are."
For a while the vessel and its cargo and the landed men and various business and conversations occupied them. But the freight for the mission once seen to, there was not much else to detain them.
The barkentine was only a coaster like many others which had begun to fill the sea a little more of late years, and presently host and guest were riding homeward. Side by side they rode, companions to the eye, but wide apart in mood; within the turbulent young figure of Gaston dwelt a spirit that could not be more at ease, while revolt was steadily kindling beneath the schooled and placid mask of the Padre.
Yet still the strangeness of his situation in such a remote, resourceless place came back as a marvel into the young man's lively mind. Twenty years in prison, he thought, and hardly aware of it! And he glanced at the silent priest. A man so evidently fond of music, of theaters, of the world, to whom pressed flowers had meant something once—and now contented to bleach upon these wastes! Not even desirous of a brief holiday, but finding an old organ and some old operas enough recreation! "It is his age, I suppose," thought Gaston. And then the notion of himself when he should be sixty occurred to him, and he spoke.
"Do you know, I do not believe," said he, "that I should ever reach such contentment as yours."
"Perhaps you will," said Padre Ignacio, in a low voice.
"Never!" declared the youth. "It comes only to the few, I am sure."
"Yes. Only to the few," murmured the Padre.
"I am certain that it must be a great possession," Gaston continued; "and yet—and yet—dear me! life is a splendid thing!"