The street was full too, chiefly of peasants, but among them myriad resolute American virgins, in motor veils, whom nothing can ever surprise; a few American men, sceptical, as ever, of anything ever happening; here and there a diffident Englishwoman and Englishman, more in the background, but destined in the end to see all.

But what I chiefly noticed was the native girls, with their proud bosoms carried high and nothing on their heads.

They at any rate know their own future.

No rushing over the globe for them, but the simple natural home life and children.
In the gloom the younger girls in white muslin were like pretty ghosts, each followed by a solicitous mother giving a touch here and a touch there--mothers who once wore muslin too, will wear it no more, and are now happy in pride in their daughters.

And very little girls too--mere tots--wearing wings, who very soon were to join the procession as angels.
And all the while the darkness was growing, and on the hill where the church stands lights were beginning to move about, in that mysterious way which torches have when a procession is being mobilized, while all the villas on the hills around had their rows of candles.
And then the shifting flames came gradually into a mass and took a steady upward progress, and the melancholy strains of an ancient ecclesiastical lamentation reached our listening ears.