second time.  The gloomy minister, whom God should have employed only to carry out His revenges, received the sick girl with a smile, which expressed, indeed, as much bitterness as sweetness, as much vengeance as charity.  Esther, practised in meditation, and used to revulsions of feeling since she had led this almost monastic life, felt on her part, for the second time, distrust of her protector; but, as on the former occasion, his speech reassured her.

“Well, my dear child,” said he, “and why have you never spoken to me of Lucien?”

“I promised you,” she said, shuddering convulsively from head to foot; “I swore to you that I would never breathe his name.”

“And yet you have not ceased to think of him.”

“That, monsieur, is the only fault I have committed.  I think of him always; and just as you came, I was saying his name to myself.”

“Absence is killing you?”

Esther’s only answer was to hang her head as the sick do who already scent the breath of the grave.

“If you could see him——?” said he.

“It would be life!” she cried.

“And do you think of him only spiritually?”

“Ah, monsieur, love cannot be dissected!”

“Child of an accursed race!  I have done everything to save you; I send you back to your fate.—­You shall see him again.”

“Why insult my happiness?  Can I not love Lucien and be virtuous?  Am I not ready to die here for virtue, as I should be ready to die for him?  Am I not dying for these two fanaticisms—­for virtue, which was to make me worthy of him, and for him who flung me into the embrace of virtue?  Yes, and ready to die without seeing him or to live by seeing him.  God is my Judge.”

The color had mounted to her face, her whiteness had recovered its amber warmth.  Esther looked beautiful again.

“The day after that on which you are washed in the waters of baptism you shall see Lucien once more; and if you think you can live in virtue by living for him, you shall part no more.”

The priest was obliged to lift up Esther, whose knees failed her; the poor child dropped as if the ground had slipped from under her feet.  The Abbe seated her on a bench; and when she could speak again she asked him: 

“Why not to-day?”

“Do you want to rob Monseigneur of the triumph of your baptism and conversion?  You are too close to Lucien not to be far from God.”

“Yes, I was not thinking——­”

“You will never be of any religion,” said the priest, with a touch of the deepest irony.

“God is good,” said she; “He can read my heart.”

Conquered by the exquisite artlessness and gestures, Herrera kissed her on the forehead for the first time.

“Your libertine friends named you well; you would bewitch God the Father.—­A few days more must pass, and then you will both be free.”

“Both!” she echoed in an ecstasy of joy.