“I say, d’you think I shall go to heaven?”

And with that she shivered, while the count, in his surprise at her putting such singular questions at such a moment, felt his old religious remorse returning upon him.  Then with her chemise slipping from her shoulders and her hair unpinned, she again threw herself upon his breast, sobbing and clinging to him as she did so.

“I’m afraid of dying!  I’m afraid of dying!” He had all the trouble in the world to disengage himself.  Indeed, he was himself afraid of giving in to the sudden madness of this woman clinging to his body in her dread of the Invisible.  Such dread is contagious, and he reasoned with her.  Her conduct was perfect—­she had only to conduct herself well in order one day to merit pardon.  But she shook her head.  Doubtless she was doing no one any harm; nay, she was even in the constant habit of wearing a medal of the Virgin, which she showed to him as it hung by a red thread between her breasts.  Only it had been foreordained that all unmarried women who held conversation with men would go to hell.  Scraps of her catechism recurred to her remembrance.  Ah, if one only knew for certain, but, alas, one was sure of nothing; nobody ever brought back any information, and then, truly, it would be stupid to bother oneself about things if the priests were talking foolishness all the time.  Nevertheless, she religiously kissed her medal, which was still warm from contact with her skin, as though by way of charm against death, the idea of which filled her with icy horror.  Muffat was obliged to accompany her into the dressing room, for she shook at the idea of being alone there for one moment, even though she had left the door open.  When he had lain down again she still roamed about the room, visiting its several corners and starting and shivering at the slightest noise.  A mirror stopped her, and as of old she lapsed into obvious contemplation of her nakedness.  But the sight of her breast, her waist and her thighs only doubled her terror, and she ended by feeling with both hands very slowly over the bones of her face.

“You’re ugly when you’re dead,” she said in deliberate tones.

And she pressed her cheeks, enlarging her eyes and pushing down her jaw, in order to see how she would look.  Thus disfigured, she turned toward the count.

“Do look!  My head’ll be quite small, it will!”

At this he grew vexed.

“You’re mad; come to bed!”

He fancied he saw her in a grave, emaciated by a century of sleep, and he joined his hands and stammered a prayer.  It was some time ago that the religious sense had reconquered him, and now his daily access of faith had again assumed the apoplectic intensity which was wont to leave him well-nigh stunned.  The joints of his fingers used to crack, and he would repeat without cease these words only:  “My God, my God, my God!” It was the cry of his impotence, the cry of that sin against which, though