“Don’t make me angry, my dear young Monsieur.  I have been to confession this morning.  Aren’t you comfortable?  Isn’t the house appointed richly enough for anybody?”

That girl with a peasant-nun’s face had never seen the inside of a house other than some half-ruined caserio in her native hills.

I pointed out to her that this was not a matter of splendour or comfort but of “convenances.”  She pricked up her ears at that word which probably she had never heard before; but with woman’s uncanny intuition I believe she understood perfectly what I meant.  Her air of saintly patience became so pronounced that with my own poor intuition I perceived that she was raging at me inwardly.  Her weather-tanned complexion, already affected by her confined life, took on an extraordinary clayey aspect which reminded me of a strange head painted by El Greco which my friend Prax had hung on one of his walls and used to rail at; yet not without a certain respect.

Therese, with her hands still meekly folded about her waist, had mastered the feelings of anger so unbecoming to a person whose sins had been absolved only about three hours before, and asked me with an insinuating softness whether she wasn’t an honest girl enough to look after any old lady belonging to a world which after all was sinful.  She reminded me that she had kept house ever since she was “so high” for her uncle the priest:  a man well-known for his saintliness in a large district extending even beyond Pampeluna.  The character of a house depended upon the person who ruled it.  She didn’t know what impenitent wretches had been breathing within these walls in the time of that godless and wicked man who had planted every seed of perdition in “our Rita’s” ill-disposed heart.  But he was dead and she, Therese, knew for certain that wickedness perished utterly, because of God’s anger (la colere du bon Dieu).  She would have no hesitation in receiving a bishop, if need be, since “our, Rita,” with her poor, wretched, unbelieving heart, had nothing more to do with the house.

All this came out of her like an unctuous trickle of some acrid oil.  The low, voluble delivery was enough by itself to compel my attention.

“You think you know your sister’s heart,” I asked.

She made small eyes at me to discover if I was angry.  She seemed to have an invincible faith in the virtuous dispositions of young men.  And as I had spoken in measured tones and hadn’t got red in the face she let herself go.

“Black, my dear young Monsieur.  Black.  I always knew it.  Uncle, poor saintly man, was too holy to take notice of anything.  He was too busy with his thoughts to listen to anything I had to say to him.  For instance as to her shamelessness.  She was always ready to run half naked about the hills. . . "

“Yes.  After your goats.  All day long.  Why didn’t you mend her frocks?”