“How the girl keeps the hood over her face!” she said to herself. And then, “Does she think she can hide it thus from Pierre Bernay when he comes back!”
She called a greeting, hoping Lizette would turn; but she was disappointed. The girl answered without looking around.
The church was in the middle of the wood in which the village was built. In Normandy these little villages try to hide themselves among the trees; but the gleam of their white-walled cottages betrays them.
When Lizette reached the church, twilight was gathering, and the branches of the trees wove delicate traceries against a sky of pale amethyst and rose. The old stone church, with its square tower, made a picture amid that setting which Lizette was quick to note. Pierre had taught her to see such things.
But she noted also, and with a sorrow she had never felt before, the dilapidated condition of the church. In the days when the miracles of Little Noël made the village famous, it had been different. Then, as Lizette knew, not a crumbling bit of mortar had gone untended or a candlestick unpolished. And the women of the village had woven finest cloth for the altars, and bordered them with lace of their own making. Lizette resolved that she would begin such an altar-cloth on the morrow.
Now she pushed the door open and looked shrinkingly about. There was only stillness and peace within, and the Virgin with the Child in her arms. It seemed she was waiting for Lizette. With a little sob, swept by a wave of emotion that laid bare all her heart, the girl went forward and fell on her knees, throwing back the hood from her head.
Her face was now revealed, as though for the pitiful eyes of the Virgin to see. On one side it was the beautiful face Pierre Bernay hungered for day and night: on the other it was furrowed across by the crimson scars the fire had made.
The starry eyes, upraised, overflowed with tears; the lips quivered in their supplications: “Grant to me faith, that a miracle of Little Noël may be wrought upon me! Have pity upon me and restore me for Pierre’s return!”
How often she had pictured that return—the leap of her lover’s eyes to her face, their horrified turning away; for she had begged the curé to write no hint of her disfigurement. She would have no pretense, she who had throbbed and glowed under the long caress of Pierre’s gaze. If he could not bear to look upon her, she must know it. It would be better than finding out little by little. If it should be as she feared, she would go away. She had a cousin who worked on a farm in the rich country to the east. Perhaps she could find the place; it did not much matter.
Suddenly Lizette realized that these thoughts were intruding themselves upon her devotions; that fear and foreboding were driving out the faith she longed for. She began to pray again, and little by little her heart grew still within her. It was as though a light broke softly and grew; there was no room left for fear.