a louder voice, she repeated:

'Do you hear me, Serge? You belong to me.'

Then Abbe Mouret slowly rose to his feet. He leant against the altar,
and replied:

'No. You are mistaken. I belong to God.'

He was full of serenity. His shorn face seemed like that of some stone
saint, whom no impulse of the flesh can disturb. His cassock fell around
him in straight folds like a black winding-sheet, concealing all the
outlines of his body. Albine dropped back at the sight of that sombre
phantom of her former love. She missed his freely flowing beard, his
freely flowing curls. And in the midst of his shorn locks she saw the
pallid circle of his tonsure, which disquieted her as if it had been
some mysterious evil, some malignant sore which had grown there, and
would eat away all memory of the happy days they had spent together. She
could recognise neither his hands, once so warm with caresses, nor his
lissom neck, once so sonorous with laughter; nor his agile feet, which
had carried her into the recesses of the woodlands. Could this, indeed,
be the strong youth with whom she had lived one whole season--the youth
with soft down gleaming on his bare breast, with skin browned by the
sun's rays, with every limb full of vibrating life? At this present
hour he seemed fleshless; his hair had fallen away from him, and all his
virility had withered within that womanish gown, which left him sexless.

'Oh! you frighten me,' she murmured. 'Did you think then that I was
dead, that you put on mourning? Take off that black thing; put on a
blouse. You can tuck up the sleeves, and we will catch crayfishes again.
Your arms used to be as white as mine.'

She laid her hand on his cassock, as though to tear it off him; but he
repulsed her with a gesture, without touching her. He looked at her now
and strengthened himself against temptation by never allowing his eyes
to leave her. She seemed to him to have grown taller. She was no longer
the playful damsel adorned with bunches of wild-flowers, and casting to
the winds gay, gipsy laughter, nor was she the amorosa in white skirts,
gracefully bending her slender form as she sauntered lingeringly beside
the hedges. Now, there was a velvety bloom upon her lips; her hips were
gracefully rounded; her bosom was in full bloom. She had become a woman,
with a long oval face that seemed expressive of fruitfulness. Life
slumbered within her. And her cheeks glowed with luscious maturity.

The priest, bathed