"Paul, you promised!"
"I know I promised, and for that very reason I have come to tell you before I go. I tell you that it is necessary that I should go to her; my conscience bids me go."
"Tell me one thing, Paul: are you sure you saw the servant? Temptation plays evil tricks on us and the devil has many disguises."
He did not quite understand her.
"You think I am telling a lie? I saw the servant."
"Listen—last night I saw the old priest, and I thought I heard his footsteps again just now. Last night," she went on in a low voice, "he sat beside me before the fire. I actually saw him, I tell you: he had not shaved, and the few teeth he had left were black from too much smoking. And he had holes in his stockings. And he said, 'I am alive and I am here, and very soon I shall turn you and your son out of the presbytery.' And he said I ought to have taught you your father's trade if I did not wish you to fall into sin. He so upset my mind, Paul, that I don't know whether I have acted rightly or wrongly! But I am absolutely sure that it was the devil sitting beside me last night, the spirit of evil. The servant you saw might have been temptation in another shape."
He smiled in the darkness. Nevertheless, when he thought of the fantastic figure of the servant running across the meadow, he felt a vague sense of terror in spite of himself.
"If you go there," continued his mother's voice, "are you certain you will not fall again? Even if you really saw the servant and if that woman is really ill, are you sure not to fall?"
She broke off suddenly; she seemed to see his pale face through the darkness, and she was filled with pity for him. Why should she forbid him to go to the woman? Supposing Agnes really died of grief? Supposing Paul died of grief? And she was as wracked with uncertainty as he had been in the case of Antiochus.
"Lord," she sighed; then she remembered that she had already placed herself in the hands of God, Who alone can solve all our difficulties. She felt a sort of relief, as if she had really settled the problem. And had she not settled it by entrusting it in the hands of God?