‘Ah,’ said Albine at last, ’how sweet it used to be in the sunshine!  Don’t you remember?  One morning we walked past a hedge of tall rose bushes, to the left of the flower-garden.  I recollect the very colour of the grass; it was almost blue, shot with green.  When we reached the end of the hedge we turned and walked back again, so sweet was the perfume of the sunny air.  And we did nothing else, that morning; we took just twenty paces forward and then twenty paces back.  It was so sweet a spot you would not leave it.  The bees buzzed all around; and there was a tomtit that never left us, but skipped along by our side from branch to branch.  You whispered to me, “How delightful is life!” Ah! life! it was the green grass, the trees, the running waters, the sky, and the sun, amongst which we seemed all fair and golden.’

She mused for another moment and then continued:  ’Life ’twas the Paradou.  How vast it used to seem to us!  Never were we able to find the end of it.  The sea of foliage rolled freely with rustling waves as far as the eye could reach.  And all that glorious blue overhead! we were free to grow, and soar, and roam, like the clouds without meeting more obstacles than they.  The very air was ours!’

She stopped and pointed to the low walls of the church.

’But, here, you are in a grave.  You cannot stretch out your hand without hurting it against the stones.  The roof hides the sky from you and blots out the sun.  It is all so small and confined that your limbs grow stiff and cramped as though you were buried alive.’

‘No,’ answered the priest.  ‘The church is wide as the world.’

But she waved her hands towards the crosses, and the dying Christ, and the pictures of the Passion.

’And you live in the very midst of death.  The grass, the trees, the springs, the sun, the sky, all are in the death throes around you.’

’No, no; all revives, all grows purified and reascends to the source of light.’

He had now drawn himself quite erect, with flashing eyes.  And feeling that he was now invincible, so permeated with faith as to disdain temptation, he quitted the altar, took Albine’s hand, and led her, as though she had been his sister, to the ghastly pictures of the Stations of the Cross.

‘See,’ he said, ’this is what God suffered!  Jesus is cruelly scourged.  Look!  His shoulders are naked; His flesh is torn; His blood flows down His back. . . .  And Jesus is crowned with thorns.  Tears of blood trickle down His gashed brow.  On His temple is a jagged wound. . . .  Again Jesus is insulted by the soldiers.  His murderers have scoffingly thrown a purple robe around His shoulders, and they spit upon His face and strike Him, and press the thorny crown deep into His flesh.’

Albine turned away her head, that she might not see the crudely painted pictures, in which the ochreous flesh of Christ had been plentifully bedaubed with carmine wounds.  The purple robe round His shoulders seemed like a shred of His skin torn away.