Monsieur le Curé did not reply. He had taken down his flat black hat from a peg and was carefully adjusting his square black cravat edged with white beneath his chin, when Alice de Bréville entered the doorway.
"How is his temperature?" she asked eagerly, unpinning a filmy green veil and throwing aside a gray automobile coat.
Monsieur le Curé graciously uncovered his head. "There has been no change since you left at midnight," he said gravely. "The fever is still high, the pulse weaker. I am going for Doctor Thévenet after mass. There is a train at eight."
Tranchard was now on his knees fanning a pile of fagots into a blaze, the acrid smoke drifting back into the low-ceiled room.
"I will attend to it," said Alice, turning to the fisherman. "Tell my chauffeur to wait at the church for Monsieur le Curé. The auto is at the end of the lane."
For some minutes after the clatter of Tranchard's sabots had died away in the lane, Alice de Bréville and Monsieur le Curé stood in earnest conversation beside the table.
"It may save the child's life," pleaded the priest. There was a ring of insistence in his voice, a gleam in his eyes that made the woman beside him tremble.
"You do not understand," she exclaimed, her breast heaving. "You do not realize what you ask of me. I cannot."
"You must," he insisted. "He might not understand it coming from me. You and he are old friends. You must, I tell you. Were he only here the child would be happy, the fever would be broken. It must be broken and quickly. Thévenet will tell you that when he comes."