Here at least they were an orderly population, going in and out of
the houses, visiting in one corner of the square the vast general
store that had been provided beforehand, presenting their pledges,
which, at any rate for the present, were to take the place of the
European money that the emigrants had brought with them.

He halted the car here, and leaning forward, began to look
round him carefully.

The first thing that struck him was a negative emotion--a
sense that something external was lacking. He presently
perceived what this was.

In European towns, one of the details to which he had become by
now altogether accustomed was the presence, in every street or
square at which he looked, of some emblem or statue or picture of
a religious nature. Here there was nothing. The straight
pavements ran round the square; the straight houses rose from
them, straight-windowed and straight-doored. All was admirably
sanitary and clean and wholesome. He could see through the
windows of the house opposite which his car was drawn up the
clean walls within, the decent furniture, and the rest. But there
was absolutely nothing to give a hint of anything beyond bodily
health and sanitation and decency. In London, or Lourdes, or Rome
there would at least have been a reminder--to put it very
mildly--of other possibilities than these: of a Heavenly Mother,
a Suffering Man; a hint that solid animal health was not the only
conceivable ideal. It was a tiny detail; he blamed himself for
noticing it. He reminded himself that here, at any rate, was real