The dinner over at last, some of the guests departed after lighting
their pipes. The cure, catching a glance from Chapdelaine, seemed to
recall something; arising, he motioned to Maria, and went before her
into the next room which served him both for visitors and as his
office.

A small harmonium stood against the wall; on the other side was a
table with agricultural journals, a Civil Code and a few books bound
in black leather; on the walls hung a portrait of Pius X., an
engraving of the Holy Family, the coloured broadside of a Quebec
merchant with sleighs and threshing-machines side by side, and a
number of official notices as to precautions against forest fires
and epidemics amongst cattle.

Turning to Maria, the cure said kindly enough;--"So it appears that
you are distressing yourself beyond what is reasonable and right?"

She looked at him humbly, not far from believing that the priest's
supernatural power had divined her trouble without need of telling.
He inclined his tall figure, and bent toward her his thin peasant
face; for beneath the robe was still the tiller of the soil: the
gaunt and yellow visage, the cautious eyes, the huge bony shoulders.
Even his hands--hands wont to dispense the favours of Heaven-were
those of the husbandman, with swollen veins beneath the dark skin.
But Maria saw in him only the priest, the cure of the parish,
appointed of God to interpret life to her and show her the path of
duty.

"Be seated there," he said, pointing to a chair. She sat down
somewhat like a schoolgirl who is to have a scolding, somewhat like
a woman in a sorcerer's den who awaits in mingled hope and dread the
working of his unearthly spells... ... ...

An hour later the sleigh was speeding over the hard snow.
Chapdelaine drowsed, and the reins were slipping from his open
hands. Rousing himself and lifting his head, he sang again in
full-voiced fervour the hymn he was singing as they left the
village:--

... Adorons-le dans le ciel.
Adorons-le sur l'autel ...

Then he fell silent, his chin dropping slowly toward his breast, and
the only sound upon the road was the tinkle of sleigh-bells.

Maria was thinking of the priest's words: "If there was affection
between you it is very proper that you should know regret. But you
were not pledged to one another, because neither you nor he had
spoken to your parents; therefore it is not befitting or right that
you should sorrow thus, nor feel so deep a grie