Raymond stepped toward her, and spontaneously laid his hand upon her shoulder. And strange words were on his lips, but they were sincere words out of a heart torn and troubled and dismayed, out of a soul that had recoiled as before some tremendous cataclysm. And his words were the words he had been repeating over and over to himself.
“'I am the resurrection and the life...' My poor, poor woman, let me help you. See, you must not mourn that way alone. Come, let me take you back to your home——”
She rose to her feet, and looked at him, and for an instant the hard, set, wrinkled face seemed to soften, and into the blear eyes seemed to spring a mist of tears—then her face contorted into livid fury, and she struck at his hand, flinging it from her shoulder.
“You go to hell!” she snarled. “You, and all like you, you go to hell!”
She was gone—shuffling around the corner of the church.
And then Raymond laughed a little. It was like a dash of cold water in the face. He had been a fool—a fool all morning, a fool to let mere words, mere environment have any influence upon him, a fool to sentimentality in talking to her like that, mawkish to have used the words! He would have said what she had said to any one else, if he had been in her place—only more bitterly, more virulently, if that were possible.
He shrugged his shoulders, and moved on toward the sacristy to divest himself of his surplice and stole—and again he paused, this time in the doorway, and turned around, as a voice cried out his name.
“Father Aubert!”
It was Valérie, running swiftly toward him from the presbytère.
And Raymond stood still and waited. Intuitively he knew. Something had happened in the presbytère at last. He was the gambler again, cool, imperturbable, steel-nerved, with the actual crisis upon him. It was the turn of the card, the throw of the dice, that was all. Was it life—or death? It was Valérie who was to pronounce the sentence. She reached him, breathless, flushed. He smiled at her.