paused deliberately, looking both ways with a kind of huge and rotund benevolence; then turning left in the direction the girls had gone, he set out again in leisurely, unperturbed pursuit. And the little priest trotted along beside him like a frightened puppy beside an elephant; in every step, in every stride and movement that they made, the separate characters of the two men were grotesquely and powerfully evident. The huge priest barged along with a tremendous and deliberate majesty, swinging his great belly right and left before him as an elephant swings its trunk, and magnificently indifferent to what anyone might think or say. But the little man trotted along in a state bordering on terror; he tried desperately to look casual and unconcerned, but his shifting eyes darted furtive glances right and left, and beneath the hem of his rough gown his sandalled feet kept slatting up and down in a movement that was somehow comically sly and that revealed the man’s whole character. At the corner the big priest paused deliberately again, turned, surveyed the scene and then, espying the white of the girls’dresses below the trees across the street, set out in deliberate pursuit. And the little priest trotted along beside, his head lowered, his eyes darting furtive glances right and left, his sandalled feet slatting slyly up and down. Then they caught up with the girls below the trees and, half obscured in darkness, they stood for a moment talking in low voices. Then each of the girls took one of the priests by the arm and they all walked off together down the street and soon were lost in leafy darkness and the mystery of the night. Then the waiter, who had served the priests and who, standing in the entrance, had observed the meeting across the street, turned and, glaring at the youth, said quietly:
“C’est tres joli, eh?… Moi,” he continued, after a brief pause, “je n’ai pas le sentiment religieux.” And having delivered himself without rancour or surprise of that devastating statement, he dismissed the subject from his mind completely and, turning to the table that the priests had left, he racked the saucers up and wiped the table clean.
From a distance there came suddenly a woman’s low, rich burst of sensual laughter, the receding hoof-beats of a horse, and then all around there was silence, the overpowering fragrance of the earth, the huge thrill and mystery of night, and the sense of an intolerable desire, close and palpable and lovely, and never to be grasped or found: and from the huge and haunting familiarity of all these things a thousand receding
