She stretched out her hands, as though to help him to rise.  But he only crossed himself, afresh.  He still continued his prayers as he looked at her.  He had succeeded in calming the first quiver of his flesh.  From the Divine grace which had been streaming around him since the early morning, like a celestial bath, he derived a superhuman strength.

‘It is not right for you to be here,’ he said, gravely.  ’Go away.  You are aggravating your sufferings.’

‘I suffer no longer,’ she said, with a smile.  ’I am well again; I am cured, now that I see you once more——­ Listen!  I made myself out worse than I really was, to induce them to go and fetch you.  I am quite willing to confess it now.  And that promise of going away, of leaving the neighbourhood, you didn’t suppose I should have kept it, did you?  No, indeed, unless I had carried you away with me on my shoulders.  The others don’t know it, but you must know that I cannot now live anywhere but at your side.’

She grew quite cheerful again, and drew close to the priest with the caressing ways of a child of nature, never noticing his cold and rigid demeanour.  And she became impatient, clapped her hands, and exclaimed: 

’Come, Serge; make up your mind and come.  We are only losing time.  There is no necessity to think so much about it.  It is quite simple; I am going to take you with me.  If you don’t want any one to see you, we will go along by the Mascle.  It is not very easy walking, but I managed it all by myself; and, when we are together, we can help each other.  You know the way, don’t you?  We cross the churchyard, we descend to the torrent, and then we shall only have to follow its course right up to the garden.  And one is quite at home down there.  Nobody can see us, there is nothing but brambles and big round stones.  The bed of the stream is nearly dry.  As I came along, I thought:  “By-and-by, when he is with me, we will walk along gently together and kiss one another.”  Come, Serge, be quick; I am waiting for you.’

The priest no longer appeared to hear her.  He had betaken himself to his prayers again, and was asking Heaven to grant him the courage of the saints.  Before entering upon the supreme struggle, he was arming himself with the flaming sword of faith.  For a moment he had feared he was wavering.  He had required all a martyr’s courage and endurance to remain firmly kneeling there on the flagstones, while Albine was calling him:  his heart had leapt out towards her, all his blood had surged passionately through his veins, filling him with an intense yearning to clasp her in his arms and kiss her hair.  Her mere breath had awakened all the memory of their love; the vast garden, their saunters beneath the trees, and all the joy of their companionship.

But Divine grace was poured down upon him more abundantly, and the torturing strife, during which all his blood seemed to quit his veins, lasted but a moment.  Nothing human then remained within him.  He had become wholly God’s.