Page:Levenson - Butterfly Man.djvu/108

106 "It isn't as if I could make money. I can't. Since the day I came to your church, she has given me no money."

The priest's eyebrows were lifted. "Do you not feel better that you are no longer her slave?" he asked.

"That afternoon," said Ken, "she tried to kill me. I gave in to her. She thought she had me. But I've stayed away since then. I'm broke now. I can't get away—yet I must."

Father Refugio pushed aside his wide chair. He removed his spectacles and placed them carefully on the priedieu.

"I was in San Francisco when I was a young man," he said, "and I was a young man not unlike you." He gazed keenly at Ken with his sharp black eyes.

"You," said the priest passionlessly, "are also a man removed from women."

Ken drew back.

"Unhappily for you, you cannot understand the mystery of the Church. When I walked through the Barbary Coast, when my feet strayed and my body grew weak, I didn't flee. I sought a philosophy that would save me.

"All this," he continued, "is incomprehensible to you, isn't it?"

"Yes. Like a lot of words. But I like to hear you talk, Father. It's quiet here. I'm tired of music and noise."

"My son," the old man said, "I know you as if you were I. You have not yet found yourself in life. You are essentially unworldly; you have fought yourself because you could not understand that you must conquer yourself spiritually or you will never rise."

"But how?"

"When the opportunity comes, leave Tia Juana, if you have to walk away. Better for you to suffer hunger and cold than to endure the pain of spiritual loneliness. Break