tstretched hands, and her womanly smile. He could never kneel before
her without dropping his eyes, for fear of catching sight of the hem of
her dress. Then, too, he accused her of having treated him too tenderly
in former times. She had kept him sheltered so long within the folds of
her robe, that he had let himself slip from her arms to those of a human
creature without being conscious even of the change of his affection.
He thought of all the roughness of Brother Archangias, of his refusal
to worship Mary, of the distrustful glances with which he had seemed
to watch her. He himself despaired of ever rising to such a height of
roughness, and so he simply left her, hiding her images and deserting
her altar. Yet she remained in his heart, like some love which, though
unavowed, is ever present. Sin, with sacrilege whose very horror made
him shudder, made use of her to tempt him.

Whenever he still invoked her, as he did at times of irrepressible
emotion, it was Albine who showed herself beneath the white veil, with
the blue scarf knotted round her waist and the golden roses blooming on
her bare feet. All the representations of the Virgin, the Virgin with
the royal mantle of cloth-of-gold, the Virgin crowned with stars, the
Virgin visited by the Angel of the Annunciation, the peaceful Virgin
poised between a lily and a distaff, all brought him some memory of
Albine, her smiling eyes or her delicately curved mouth or her softly
rounded cheeks.

Thereupon, by a supreme effort, he drove the female element from his
worship, and sought refuge in Jesus, though even His gentle mildness
sometimes proved a source of disquietude to him. What he needed was a
jealous God, an implacable God, the Jehovah of the Old Testament, girded
with thunder and manifesting Himself only to chastise the terrified
world. He had done with the saints and the angels and the Divine Mother;
he bowed down before God Himself alone, the omnipotent Master, who
demanded from him his every breath. And he felt the hand of this God
laid heavily upon him, holding him helpless at His mercy through space
and time, like a guilty atom. Ah! to be nothing, to be damned, to dream
of hell, to wrestle vainly against hideous temptations, all that was
surely good.

From Jesus he took but the cross. He was seized with that passion for
the cross which has made so many lips press themselves again and again
to the crucifix till they were worn away with kissing. He took up the