Raymond straightened up. Valérie, turning from the bed, gathered the basins and soiled cloths together, and moved quietly from the room.
“Will he live, father?”—it was the little gray-haired woman, Valérie's mother, Valérie's older self, who was looking up into his face so anxiously, whose lips quivered a little as she spoke.
Would the man live! A devil's laugh seemed suddenly to possess Raymond's soul. They would be alone together, that gasping, white-faced thing on the bed, and himself; they would be alone together before the doctor came—he would see to that. There had been interruption, confusion... his brain itself was confusion... extraneous thoughts had intervened... but they would be alone presently. And—great God!—what hellish mockery!—she asked him if this man would live!
“I am afraid”—he was not looking at her; his hand, clutching at the skirt of the soutane he wore, closed and tightened and clenched—“I am afraid he will not live.”
“Ah, le pauvre!” she whispered, and her eyes filled with tears. “Ah, Monsieur le Curé, I do not know these things so well as you. It is true that he is a very guilty man, but is not God very good and tender and full of compassion, father? Oh, I should not dare to say these things, for it is you who know what is right and best”—she had caught his sleeve, and was leading him across the room. “And Mother Church, Monsieur le Curé, is very merciful and very tender and very compassionate too—and, oh—and, oh—can there not be mercy and love even for such as he—must he lose his soul too, as well as his life?”
Raymond, in a blind, wondering way, stared at her. The tears were streaming down her cheeks now. They had halted before a low, old-fashioned cupboard, an armoire much like the armoire in the old hag's house, and now she opened the doors in the lower portion, and took out a worn and rusty black leather bag, and set it upon the top of the armoire.
“It is only to show you where it is, father, if—if it might be so—even for him—the Sacrament”—and, turning, she crossed the room, and meeting Valérie upon the threshold drew the girl away with her, and closed the door softly.
It was a bag such as the parish priests carried with them on their visits to the sick and dying. Raymond eyed it sullenly. The Sacrament!
“What have I to do with that!” he snarled beneath his breath.
“Are you not a priest of God?”