The door of the chamber was a little open, and she could hear the murmurs of the priest's words, and smell the odors of the sacred chrism. A great bitterness came on her mouth.
"One crust in love—to them—in the deadly winters, had been better worth than all this oil and prayer," she thought. And she could see nothing but the old famished face of Manon Dax in the snow and the moonlight, as the old woman had muttered, "God is good."
The officers of the Church ceased; there reigned an intense stillness; a stillness as of cold.
Suddenly the voice of Claudis Flamma rang out loud and shrill,—
"I loved her! Oh, God!—Thou knowest!"
She rose and looked through the space of the open door into the death-chamber.
He had sprung half erect, and with his arms outstretched, gazed at the gladness and the brightness of the day. In his eyes there was a mortal agony, a passion of reproach.
With one last supreme effort, he raised the crucifix which the priests had laid upon his bare anointed breast, and held it aloft, and shook it, and spat on it, and cast it forth from him broken upon the ground.
"Even Thou art a liar!" he cried,—it was the cry of the soul leaving the body,—with the next moment he fell back—dead.
In that one cry his heart had spoken; the cold, hard heart that yet had shut one great love and one great faith in it, and losing these, had broken and shown no wound.