s. 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.

'Why suffer? why die?' she said. 'O Serge, if you would only
remember!... You told me, that morning, that you were tired. But I knew
that you were only pretending, for the air was quite cool and we had
only been walking for a quarter of an hour. But you wanted to sit down
that you might hold me in your arms. Right down in the orchard, by
the edge of a stream, there was a cherry tree--you remember it, don't
you?--which you never could pass without wishing to kiss my hands. And
your kisses ran all up my arms and shoulders to my lips. Cherry time was
over, and so you devoured my lips.... It used to make us feel so sad to
see the flowers fading, and one day, when you found a dead bird in the
grass, you turned quite pale, and caught me to your breast, as if to
forbid the earth to take me.'

But the priest drew her towards the other Stations of the Cross.

'Hush! hush!' he cri