And Julia, at the window above, heard the remark with a sinking heart. The air seemed to be weighted with the suggestion of calamity. Concha had the manner of one bringing bad news. She forgot that this was his usual mien. ‘Ah, my child,’ he said, coming into the room a minute later and sitting down rather wearily. ‘What?’ she asked, her two hands at her breast. He glanced at her beneath his brows. The wind was in the north-east, dry and tingling. The sun had worn a coppery hue all day. Such matters affect women and those who are in mental distress. After such a day as had at last worn to evening, the mind is at a great tension, the nerves are strained. It is at such times that men fly into sudden anger and whip out the knife. At such times women are reckless, and the stories of human lives take sudden turns. Concha knew that he had this woman at a disadvantage. ‘What?’ he echoed. ‘I wish I knew. I wish at times I was no priest.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because I could help you better. Sometimes it is the man and not the priest who is the truest friend.’ ‘Why do you speak like this?’ she cried. ‘Is there danger? What has happened?’ ‘You know best, my child, if there is danger; you know what is likely to happen.’ Julia stood looking at him with hard eyes—the eyes of one in mortal fear. ‘You have always been my friend,’ she said slowly, ‘my best friend.’ ‘Yes. A woman’s lover is never her best friend.’ ‘Has anything happened to Esteban?’ The priest did not answer at once, but paused, reflecting, and dusting his sleeve, where there was always some snuff requiring attention at such moments. ‘I know so little,’ he said. ‘I am no politician. What can I say? What can I advise you when I am in the dark? And the time is slipping by—slipping by.’ ‘I cannot tell you,’ she answered, turning away and looking out of the window. ‘You cannot tell the priest—tell the man.’ Then, suddenly, she reached the end of her endurance. Standing with her back towards him, she told her story, and Concha listened with a still, breathless avidity as one who, having long sought knowledge, finds it at last when it seemed out of reach. The little fountain plashed in the courtyard below; a frog in the basin among the water-lilies croaked sociably while the priest and the beautiful woman in the room above made history. For it is not only in kings’ palaces nor yet in Parliaments that the story of the world is shaped. Concha spoke no word, and Julia, having begun, left nothing unsaid, but told him every detail in a slow mechanical voice, as if bidden thereto by a stronger will than her own. ‘He is all the world to me,’ she said simply, in conclusion. ‘Yes; and the happiest women are those who live in a small world.’ A silence fell upon them. The old priest surreptitiously looked at his watch. He was essentially a man of action.