And now her hands closed softly, and remained still, and held his face between them--and she was gazing down at him. He could see her, he had no need to open his eyes for that--he could see the sweet, quivering lips; the love, the terror, the yearning, the fear mingling in the white, beautiful face. And then suddenly, with a choked sob, she bent forward and kissed him, and laid her face against his cheek.
"He will not speak to me!"--her voice was breaking. "Then listen, my lover--my lover, who cannot hear--my lover, who will never know. Is it wrong to kiss you, is it making my sin the greater to tell you--you who will not hear. There is only God to know. And out of all my life it is for just this once--for just this once. Afterwards, if you live, I will ask God to forgive--for it is only for this once--this once out of all my life. And--and--if you die--then--then I will ask God to be merciful and--and take me too. You did not know I loved you so, and I had never thought to tell you. And if you live you will never know, because you are God's priest, and my sin is very terrible, but--but I--I shall know that you are somewhere, a big and brave and loyal man, and glad in your life, and--and loved, as all love you here in St. Marleau. All through my life I will love you--all through my life--and--and I will remember that for just this once, for this moment out of all the years, I gave myself to you."
She drew him closer. An agony that was maddening shot through his side as she moved him. If he might only clench his teeth deep in his lips that he might not scream out! But he could not do that for Valeric would see--and Valérie must not know. Tighter and tighter she held him in her strong, young arms--and now, like the bursting wide of flood-gates, there was passion in her voice.
"I love you! I love you! I love you! And I am afraid--and I am afraid! For I am only a woman, and it is a woman's love. Would you turn from me if you knew? No, no--I--I do not know what I am saying--only that you are here with my arms around you--and that--that your face is so pale--and that--and that you will not speak to me."
She was crying. She bent lower until, as a mother clasps a child, his head lay upon her breast and shoulder, and her own head was buried on his breast. And again with the movement came excruciating pain, and now a weakness, a giddy swirling of his senses. It passed. He opened his eyes for an instant, for she could not see him now. He was lying just inside the chancel rail, and almost at the altar's foot. The sunlight streamed through the windows of the church, but they were in shadow, Valérie and he, in a curious shadow--it seemed to fall in a straight line across them both, and yet be spread out in two wide arms that completely covered them. And at first he could not understand, and then he saw that the great cross lay forward with its foot against the wall and the arms upon the shattered chancel rail--and the shadow was the shadow of the cross. What did it mean? Was it there premonitory of a wrath still unappeased, that was still to know fulfilment; or was it there in pity--on Valérie--into whose life he had brought a sorrow that would never know its healing? He closed his eyes again--the giddiness had come once more.