Page:Dellada - The Woman and the Priest, 1922.djvu/241

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THE WOMAN AND THE PRIEST

clean sweet scents from the garden. In the lane under the ridge there was a tinkle of bells as the goats were driven to their pasture, little bells that sounded like childish echoes of the cheerful if monotonous chime wherewith Antiochus, up in the church tower, summoned the people to wake from sleep and come to hear Mass.

Everything around was sweet and peaceful, bathed in the rosy light of early morning. And Paul remembered his dream.

There was nothing to hinder him from going out, from going to church and taking up his ordinary life again. Yet all his fear returned upon him; he was afraid alike of going forward or of turning back. As he stood on the step of the open door he felt as if he were on the summit of some precipitous mountain, it was impossible to get any higher and below him yawned the abyss. So he stood there for unspeakable moments, during which his heart beat furiously and he had the physical sensation of falling, of shrugging at the bottom of a gulf, in a swirl of foaming waters, a wheel that

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