ee they are all handsome and happy."

Then they ceased to laugh, leaning over the old Bible whose pages she
turned with her white fingers, he standing behind her, his white beard
mingling with her blond, youthful tresses.

Suddenly he whispered to her softly:

"But you, so young, do you never regret that you have chosen me--me, who
am so old, as old as the world?"

She gave a start of surprise, and turning round looked at him.

"You old! No, you are young, younger than I!"

And she laughed so joyously that he, too, could not help smiling. But he
insisted a little tremulously:

"You do not answer me. Do you not sometimes desire a younger lover, you
who are so youthful?"

She put up her lips and kissed him, saying in a low voice:

"I have but one desire, to be loved--loved as you love me, above and
beyond everything."

The day on which Martine saw the pastel nailed to the wall, she looked
at it a moment in silence, then she made the sign of the cross, but
whether it was because she had seen God or the devil, no one could
say. A few days before Easter she had asked Clotilde if she would
not accompany her to church, and the latter having made a sign in the
negative, she departed for an instant from the deferential silence which
she now habitually maintained. Of all the new things which
astonished her in the house, what most astonished her was the sudden
irreligiousness of her young mistress. So she allowed herself to resume
her former tone of remonstrance, and to scold her as she used to do when
she was a little girl and refused to say her prayers. "Had she no longer
the fear of the Lord before her, then? Did she no longer tremble at the
idea of going to hell, to burn there forever?"

Clotilde could not suppress a smile.

"Oh, hell! you know that it has never troubled me a great deal. But you
are mistaken if you think I am no longer religious. If I have left off
going to church it is because I perform my devotions elsewhere, that is
all."

Martine looked at her, open-mouthed, not comprehending her. It was all
over; mademoiselle was indeed lost. And she never again asked her to
accompany her to St. Saturnin. But her own devotion increased until it
at last became a mania. She was no longer to be met, as before, with the
eternal stocking in her hand which she knitted even when walking, when
not occupied in her household duties. Whenever she had a moment to
spare, she ran to church and remained there, repeating