‘Policemen—policemen, not soldiers,’ corrected Father Concha patiently, as if it did not matter much. They were sitting in the broad vine-clad verandah of the Casa Barenna, that grim old house on the Bobadilla road, two miles from Ronda. The priest had walked thither, as the dust on his square-toed shoes and black stockings would testify. He had laid aside his mournful old hat, long since brown and discoloured, and was wiping his forehead with a cheap pocket-handkerchief of colour and pattern rather loud for his station in life. ‘Well, they have swords,’ persisted the lady. ‘Policemen,’ said Father Concha, in a stern and final voice, which caused Señora Barenna to cast her eyes upwards with an air of resigned martyrdom. ‘Ah, that Alcalde!’ she whispered between her teeth. ‘A little dog, when it is afraid, growls,’ said Concha philosophically. ‘The Alcalde is a very small dog, and he is at his wit’s end. Such a thing has not occurred in Ronda before, and the Alcalde’s world is Ronda. He does not know whether his office permits him to inspect young ladies’ love letters or not.’ ‘Love letters!’ ejaculated Señora Barenna. She evidently had a keen sense of the romantic, and hoped for something more tragic than a mere flirtation begotten of idleness at sea. ‘Yes,’ said Concha, crossing his legs and looking at his companion with a queer cynicism. ‘Young people mostly pass that way.’ He had had a tragedy, this old man. One of those grim tragedies of the cassock which English people rarely understand. And his tragedy sat beside him on the cane chair, stout and eminently worldly, while he had journeyed on the road of life with all his illusions, all his half-fledged aspirations, untouched by the cold finger of reality. He despised the woman now, the contempt lurked in his cynical smile, but he clung with a half-mocking, open-eyed sarcasm to his memories. ‘But,’ he said reassuringly, ‘Julia is a match for the Alcalde, you may rest assured of that.’ Señora Barenna turned with a gesture of her plump hand indicative of bewilderment. ‘I do not understand her. She laughs at the soldiers—the policemen, I mean. She laughs at me. She laughs at everything.’ ‘Yes, it is the hollow hearts that make most noise in the world,’ said Concha, folding his handkerchief upon his knee. He was deadly poor, and had a theory that a folded handkerchief remains longer clean. His whole existence was an effort to do without those things that make life worth living. ‘Why did you send for me?’ he asked. ‘But to advise me—to help me. I have been, all my life, cast upon the world alone. No one to help me—no one to understand. No one knows what I have suffered—my husband—’ ‘Was one of the best and most patient of mortals, and is assuredly in heaven, where I hope there are a few mansions reserved for men only.’