you; I should let you fall.... Wait till this
shudder has passed away. Give me your hands, and let me kiss them again.
Be gentle and do not look at me with such angry eyes. Help me to find my
heart again.'

He spoke with such genuine sadness, such evident longing to begin
the past anew, that Albine was touched. For a moment all her wonted
gentleness returned to her, and she questioned him anxiously:

'What is the matter with you? What makes you so ill?'

'I do not know. It is as though all my blood had left my veins. Just
now, as I was coming here, I felt as if some one had flung a robe of ice
around my shoulders, which turned me into stone from head to foot.... I
have felt it before, but where I don't remember.'

She interrupted him with a kindly laugh.

'You are a child. You have caught cold, that's all. At any rate, it is
not I that you are afraid of, is it? We won't stop in the garden during
the winter, like a couple of wild things. We will go wherever you like,
to some big town. We can love each other there, amongst all the people,
as quietly as amongst the trees. You will see that I can be something
else than a wilding, for ever bird's-nesting and tramping about for
hours. When I was a little girl, I used to wear embroidered skirts and
fine stockings and laces and all kinds of finery. I dare say you never
heard of that.'

He was not listening to her. He suddenly gave vent to a little cry, and
said: 'Ah! now I recollect!'

She asked him what he meant, but he would not answer her. He had just
remembered the feeling he had long ago experienced in the chapel of the
seminary. That was the icy robe enwrapping his shoulders and turning him
to stone. And then his life as a priest took complete possession of his
thoughts. The vague recollections which had haunted him as he walked
from Les Artaud to the Paradou became more and more distinct and assumed
complete mastery over him. While Albine talked on of the happy life that
they would lead together, he heard the tinkling of the sanctuary bell
that signalled the elevation of the Host, and he saw the monstrance
trace gleaming crosses over the heads of kneeling multitudes.

'And for your sake,' Albine was saying, 'I will put on my broidered
skirts again.... I want you to be bright and gay. We will try to find
something to make you lively. Perhaps you will love me better when you
see me looking beautiful and prettily dressed, like a fine lady. I will
wear my comb prope