Page:Dellada - The Woman and the Priest, 1922.djvu/48

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THE WOMAN AND THE PRIEST

"In that way you will be able to support your boy, and later on you can send for him and put him to school."

And so she worked and lived only for him.

She had lacked neither the occasion nor the inclination to indulge in pleasures, if not in sin. Master and servants, peasant and townsman, all had tried to catch her as once the old kinsman had caught her amongst the tamarisks. Man is a hunter and woman his prey, but she had succeeded in evading all pitfalls and keeping herself pure and good, since she already looked on herself as the mother of a priest. Then wherefore now this chastisement, O Lord?

She bowed her weary head and the tears rolled down her face and fell on the rosary in her lap.

Gradually she grew drowsy, and confused memories floated through her mind. She thought she was in the big warm kitchen of the Seminary, where she had been servant for ten years and where she had succeeded in getting her Paul admitted as student. Black figures went silently to and fro, and in the

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