"Out of all the world," she said under her breath, "you alone held out a comrade's hand. Does anything else matter? ... Think! You are forgetting. Remember! Picture me where I was—as I was—only yesterday! Look at me now—here, beside you.—here under this roof, among these people—and the taste of their salt still keen in my mouth! Now, do you understand what you have done for me—you alone? Now, do you understand what I—feel—for you?—For you who mean not only life to me, but who have made possible for me that life which follows death?"
Her cheeks flushed; she turned breathlessly toward him.
"I tell you," she whispered, "you have offered me Christ, as surely as He has ever been offered at any communion since the Last Supper! ... That is what you have done for me!"
CHAPTER XXXIV
Dinner was ended.
Gray had retired to his room, persuaded by Madame de Moidrey, who bribed him by promising to read to him when he was tired of talking shop to Captain Halkett.
Sister Eila had returned to the east wing, which was convenient to her business as well as to her devotions.
Also, she had need of Father Chalus, who had come all the way from Dreslin on foot. For it was included in the duty of the parish priest to confess both Sister Eila and Sister Félicité; only the sudden perils and exigencies of home duties in Dreslin had detained him since the war broke out.
He was old, lean, deeply worn in the service of the poor—a white-haired man who looked out on the world through kindly blue eyes dimmed by threescore years of smoky candlelight and the fine print of breviaries—a priest devotedly loved in Dreslin, and by the household of the Château, and by every inhabitant of the scattered farms composing the little hamlet called Saïs.
It appeared that Sister Eila had great need of Father Chalus, for they had gone away together, into the eastern wing of the house. And the Countess, noticing their departure, smiled to herself; for, like everybody else, she was skeptical regarding the reality of any sins that Sister Eila might have to confess.