After an old priest travels to Rome, he suddenly becomes mute - overwhelmed with the need to express the beauty around him through drawing. After neglecting his priest duties for weeks, he sustains an injury during an earthquake that leaves him in the hospital. As he is dying in the hospital, he begins to assess his life and how he got there. His flashback reveals that he had gone mute before, after falling in love with a woman the first time he visited Rome. Because it was against his ethics as a priest, the love affair got him sent to an unwanted church in Arizona where he remained in the church until the story takes place. In the last lines of the story, the priest dies, but not before admitting he did not want to be a priest.