Page:Dellada - The Woman and the Priest, 1922.djvu/79

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THE WOMAN AND THE PRIEST

delight, but she never moved from her corner.

In imagination he saw again those dark eyes, in whose depths the light of sorrow and desire already shone; he saw them far off at the bottom of his memory as at the bottom of that mysterious courtyard, and it seemed to him that they resembled the eyes of Agnes.

*****

Then he saw himself again in that same street where he had thrown stones at the passers-by, but farther down, at the turning of a little lane shut in by a group of dilapidated old houses. His home lay just between the street and the lane, in the house of well-to-do people, all women and all fat and serious; they used to close all doors and windows at dusk and they received no visitors except other women and priests, with whom they used to joke and laugh, but always in a decorous, guarded manner.

It had been one of these priests who had caught him by the shoulders one day, and gripping him firmly between his bony knees

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