On the way home, she and Jacques went for a stroll in the Place Maubert, that favourite haunt of petits-bourgeois, where in pathetic finery they aired their puny pretensions to pass for honnêtes gens, or, more happily constituted, exercised their capacity for loud laughter and coarse wit, and the one privilege of their class, that of making love in public.
As a rule, Madeleine would rather have died than have been seen walking in the Place Maubert, but now, when her soul was floating on a sea of grace, so dazzlingly sunny, it mattered but little in which of the paths of earth her body chose to stray; however, this evening, her happiness was a little disturbed by an inward voice telling her that now was the time for enlightening Jacques with regard to her feelings towards him.
She looked at him; he was a lovable creature and she realised that she would sorely miss him. Then she remembered that on Saturday she was going to see Sappho, and in comparison with her the charm of pale, chestnut-haired young men lost all potency. She was going to see Sappho. God was very good!
They were threading their way between squares of box clipped in arabesque. It was sunset, and from a distant shrubbery there came the sounds of children at their play. The pungent smell of box, the voices of children playing at sunset; they brought to Madeleine a sudden whiff of the long, nameless nostalgia of childhood, a nostalgia for what? Perhaps for the vitæ munus (the fulfilment of life) of the Vesper hymn; well, on Saturday she would know the vitæ munus.
She seized Jacques’s arm and, with shining eyes, cried out: ‘Oh, God is exceeding merciful to His chosen! He keeps the promise in the Psalms, He “maketh glad our youth.” When I think on His great goodness ... I want ... I want ... Oh, words fail me! How comes it, Jacques, you do not see His footsteps everywhere upon the earth?’ She was trembling with exultation and her voice shook.
Jacques looked at her gently, and his face was troubled.
‘One cannot reveal Grace to another by words and argument,’ she went on, ‘each must feel it in his own soul, but let it once be felt, then never more will one be obnoxious to doubts on ghostly matters, willy-nilly one will believe to all eternity!’
They found a quiet little seat beside a fountain and sat down. After a moment’s silence Madeleine once more took up her Te Deum.
‘Matter for thanksgiving is never wanting, as inch by inch the veil is lifted from the eyes of one’s spirit to discover in time the whole fair prospect of God’s most amiable Providence. Oh, Jacques, why are you blind?’ His only answer was to kick the pebbles, his eyes fixed on the ground.
Then, in rather a constrained voice, he said: ‘I would rather put it thus; matter for pain is never wanting to him who stares at the world with an honest and unblinking eye. What sees he? Pain—pain—and again pain. It is harsh and incredible to suppose that ’twould be countenanced by a good God. What say you, Chop, to pain?’