Mrs. Bihn The Pearl-John Steinbeck- Chapter 3

And when it was made plain who Kino was, the doctor grew stern and judicious at the same time.

For there were not many buyers really--there was only one, and he kept these agents in separate offices to give a semblance of competition.

The news stirred up something infinitely black and evil in the town; the black distillate was like the scorpion, or like hunger in the smell of food, or like loneliness when love is withheld.

"He was a man transfigured."

He made it sound like a benediction.

Kino stood in the door, filling it, and hatred raged and flamed in back of his eyes, and fear too, for the hundreds of years of subjugation were cut deep in him.

Then he worked very deftly.

From then the corner of the house came a sound so soft that it might have been simply a thought, a little furtive movement, a touch of a food on earth, the almost inaudible purr of controlled breathing.

Its warm lucence promised a poultice against illness and a wall against insult.

He could see the little image of the consecrated candle reflected in the soft surface of the pearl, and he heard again in his ears the lovely music of the undersea...

...the tone of the diffused green light of the sea bottom.

"It is nothing," Kino said, but his eyes and his voice were hard and cold and a brooding hate was growing in him.