My uncle seemed disinclined to carry on the conversation, so I whiled away the time by taking a survey of the cathedral. It was a Saint's day on the morrow, and preparations for the festival occupied most of the attendants. There was much moving to and fro. Now and again peasants would enter with baskets of fruit and flowers for the adornment of the columns, shrines and altars, until the place began to assume the aspect of a flower market. Tired of gazing at the decorations, I directed my attention to a confessional box not far off. Unlike most confessional boxes, the front of this one was quite open to view, and within there sat an aged priest, corded and sandalled, while outside, with his lips applied to an orifice on a level with the priest's ear, knelt a man whispering a confession. The penitent was aged too, with hair that gave him quite a venerable appearance. I watched the "little sinner confessing to the big sinner," to use a favourite phrase of my uncle's, and noted the troubled expression on his face and the nervous humility with which he clasped one hand over the other. If looks were to be taken as evidence the father confessor was deeply interested in the recital of the other's frailties. Suddenly I saw his eyes turn to a far corner of the cathedral, and following his gaze I saw that the objects of his attention were Daphne and Angelo, who had just come into view from behind the pillars of a colonnade. She was laughing gaily, and the artist was bending over her in an attitude suggestive of tender affection. Long and earnest was the look that the priest fixed upon the pair--so long and earnest that my curiosity was aroused as to its cause. Was he envying Angelo his happiness? Was he thinking of the maidens who might have loved him in the early days before his vows of celibacy were taken? A quick motion of the priest's cold grey eyes recalled me from this train of thought, and to my surprise I found him regarding _me_ with a keen gaze that was in no way abated when he saw that I was conscious of it. Then he turned his gaze once more upon Daphne and her escort, who had again become visible between the columns of the cloister. And so long as he sat there, coffined in the confessional box, he continued to manifest this singularity, that when he was not looking at Daphne and Angelo he was looking at me, and when he was not looking at me he was looking at Daphne and Angelo, so that I could tell simply from the motion of his eyes when the artist and my cousin were visible, and when the pillared walk concealed them from view. Although he appeared to be putting a number of questions to the aged penitent he nevertheless did not abate one jot of his steady gaze.