The beautiful little boy with eyes like blue stones, and lashes¹ that sprayed open from them like flower-petals had finished telling his sin to Father Schwartz—and the square of sunshine in which he sat had moved forward half an hour into the room. Rudolph had become less frightened now; once eased of the story a reaction had set in. He knew that as long as he was in the room with this priest God would not stop his heart, so he sighed and sat quietly, waiting for the priest to speak.

 

Father Schwartz's cold watery² eyes were fixed³ upon the carpet pattern on which the sun had brought out the swastikas and the flat bloomless vines and the pale echoes of flowers. The hall-clock ticked insistently⁴ toward sunset, and from the ugly room and from the afternoon outside the window arose a stiff monotony, shattered now and then by the reverberate⁵ clapping of a far-away hammer on the dry air. The priest's nerves were strung thin and the beads⁶ of his rosary were crawling and squirming like snakes upon the green felt of his table top. He could not remember now what it was he should say.

 

Of all the things in this lost Swede town he was most aware of this little boy's eyes—the beautiful eyes, with lashes that left them reluctantly and curved back as though to meet them once more.

 

For a moment longer the silence persisted while Rudolph waited, and the priest struggled to remember something that was slipping farther and farther away from him, and the clock ticked in the broken house. Then Father Schwartz stared hard at the little boy and remarked in a peculiar⁷ voice:

 

"When a lot of people get together in the best places things go glimmering⁸."

 

Rudolph started and looked quickly at Father Schwartz's face.

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