'Ah! So there is nothing else! there is nothing else!' she continued, in a burst of indignation; 'then you have deceived me! Down there on the terrace, on those star-lit evenings, you promised me heaven, and I believed your promises. I sold myself, and gave myself up. I was quite mad during those first transports of prayer. To-day the bargain holds no longer. I shall return to my old ways, and resume my old peaceful quiet. I will turn everybody out of the house, and make it as it used to be; I will again sit in my old corner on the terrace, and mend the linen. Needlework never wearies me. And I will have Désirée back to sit beside me on her little stool. She used to sit there, the dear innocent, and laugh and make dolls——'
Then she burst into a fit of sobbing:
'I want my children! They were my safeguard. Since they left I have lost my head, I have done things that I ought not to have done. Why did you take them from me? They went away from me one by one, and the house became like a strange house to me. My heart was no longer wrapped up in it, I was glad when I left it for an afternoon; and when I came back in the evening, I seemed to have fallen amongst strangers. The very furniture seemed cold and unfriendly. I quite hated the house. But I will go and fetch them again, the poor darlings. Everything will become as it used to be directly they return. Oh! if I could only sink down again into my old sleepy quiet!'
She was growing more and more excited. The priest tried to calm her by a method which he had often before found efficacious.
'Be calm, my dear lady, be calm,' he said, trying to take her hands, and hold them between his own.
'Don't touch me!' she cried, recoiling from him. 'I don't want you to do so. When you hold me I am as weak as a child. The warmth of your hands takes all my resolution and strength away. The trouble would only begin again to-morrow; for I cannot go on living like this, and you only assuage me for an hour.'
A deep shadow passed over her face as she continued:
'No! I am damned now! I shall never love my home again. And if the children come, they would ask for their father—Oh! it is that which is killing me! I shall never be forgiven till I have confessed my crime to a priest.'
Then she fell upon her knees.
'I am a guilty woman. That is why God turns His face from me.'