Had that been that _cachorra_?
Nothing in his life had been so hard to meet as this insidious drain
of distrust in his own powers; this sense of a traitor within the
walls. His iron-gray hair had turned white. It was always this now,
from the beginning of the day to the end of the night: how was he to
know? How was he to be inevitably, unshakably, sure?
Curiously, after all this purgatory of doubts, he did know them. For
a moment at least, when he had heard them, he was unshakably sure.
It was on an evening of the winter holidays, the Portuguese festival
of _Menin' Jesus_. Christ was born again in a hundred mangers on a
hundred tiny altars; there was cake and wine; songs went shouting by
to the accompaniment of mandolins and tramping feet. The wind blew
cold under a clear sky. In all the houses there were lights; even in
Boaz Negro's shop a lamp was lit just now, for a man had been in for
a pair of boots which Boaz had patched. The man had gone out again.
Boaz was thinking of blowing out the light. It meant nothing to him.
He leaned forward, judging the position of the lamp-chimney by the
heat on his face, and puffed out his cheeks to blow. Then his cheeks
collapsed suddenly, and he sat back again.
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