“Are you weeping?” asked the Abbe, who had heard a sound of sobbing.

“Yes,” simply answered Helene.

They could not see each other.  For a long time she continued weeping, her whole being exhaling a plaintive murmur.  Behind them, meantime, Jeanne lay at rest in innocent sleep, and Monsieur Rambaud, his whole attention engrossed, bent his grizzled head over the doll which he had dismembered.  At times he could not prevent the loosened springs from giving out a creaking noise, a childlike squeaking which his big fingers, though plied with the utmost gentleness, drew from the disordered mechanism.  If the doll vented too loud a sound, however, he at once stopped working, distressed and vexed with himself, and turning towards Jeanne to see if he had roused her.  Then once more he would resume his repairing, with great precautions, his only tools being a pair of scissors and a bodkin.

“Why do you weep, my daughter?” again asked the Abbe.  “Can I not afford you some relief?”

“Ah! let me be,” said Helene; “these tears do me good.  By-and-by, by-and-by—­”

A stifling sensation checked any further words.  Once before, in this very place, she had been convulsed by a storm of tears; but then she had been alone, free to sob in the darkness till the emotion that wrung her was dried up at its source.  However, she knew of no cause of sorrow; her daughter was well once more, and she had resumed the old monotonous delightful life.  But it was as though a keen sense of awful grief had abruptly come upon her; it seemed as if she were rolling into a bottomless abyss which she could not fathom, sinking with all who were dear to her in a limitless sea of despair.  She knew not what misfortune hung over her head; but she was without hope, and could only weep.

Similar waves of feeling had swept over her during the month of the Virgin in the church laden with the perfume of flowers.  And, as twilight fell, the vastness of Paris filled her with a deep religious impression.  The stretch of plain seemed to expand, and a sadness rose up from the two millions of living beings who were being engulfed in darkness.  And when it was night, and the city with its subdued rumbling had vanished from view, her oppressed heart poured forth its sorrow, and her tears overflowed, in presence of that sovereign peace.  She could have clasped her hands and prayed.  She was filled with an intense craving for faith, love, and a lapse into heavenly forgetfulness; and the first glinting of the stars overwhelmed her with sacred terror and enjoyment.

A lengthy interval of silence ensued, and then the Abbe spoke once more, this time more pressingly.

“My daughter, you must confide in me.  Why do you hesitate?”

She was still weeping, but more gently, like a wearied and powerless child.

“The Church frightens you,” he continued.  “For a time I thought you had yielded your heart to God.  But it has been willed otherwise.  Heaven has its own purposes.  Well, since you mistrust the priest, why should you refuse to confide in the friend?”