She did not answer back with pride. Instead, her whole face grew soft, and the large tears filled her eyes and ran slowly down her cheeks. “I want to do right,” she said humbly; “but I cannot feel that it is right. Father, see: I will not ask you to make my intention yours. But I promise you one thing: I must ask God to grant me this blessing, but it shall be the last time. If I fail now, let his will be done. And do you, father, ask him to make it plain to me what his will is.”
“God bless you, daughter!” the old priest answered, much moved by her humility. “I will pray that indeed. But still I warn you that I think you are doing wrong in so much as trying such an experiment as this which you have undertaken.”
“No, no,” she cried again. “No, no, father. This once I must try, or my heart will break.”
Again in the carriage, she pressed Elizabeth to her closely, and kissed her, and said words of passionate love, finding relief thus for the pent-up feelings of her heart; but Elizabeth knew not how to reply. It troubled and perplexed her—this lavish affection; for she could not repay it in kind. It only served to waken a suffering which she had known from childhood, a strange, unsatisfied yearning within her, which came at the sight of a lovely landscape, or the sound of exquisite music, or the caresses of some friend. She wanted more; and where and what was that “more,” which seemed to lie beyond everything, and which she could never grasp?
She felt it often during her visit—that visit where attention was constantly bestowed on her, and she lived in the midst of such luxury as she had never known before. Something in Heinrich’s face seemed to her to promise an answer to her questionings—it was so at rest, so settled; and this, more than anything else about him, interested and attracted her. Madame saw the interest, without guessing the cause. She felt also that Heinrich was not wholly insensible to Elizabeth’s presence; and though she asked him no direct questions, she contrived to turn conversation into the channels which could not fail to engage him, and which the young convert also cared for most.
Elizabeth decided that Heinrich knew more than any one else, but even he tired her sometimes. “He knows too much,” she thought, “and he is so cold and indifferent. Yet he would not be himself if he were more like madame; and she is too tender. Oh! what does it all mean? There is nothing that makes one content except church, and one cannot be always there.”
So passed the time till S. Agnes’ Eve. That night, when the young people entered the dining-hall, madame was absent. She sent a message that they must dine without her, as she had a severe headache, and Elizabeth might come to her an hour after dinner.
The meal was a silent one. When it was over, and they went into the library, Heinrich seated himself at the organ. Grand chorals, funeral marches full of mourning and awe and hope, Mass music welcoming the coming of the Lord of Sabaoth, filled the lofty room. When he ceased, Elizabeth was sobbing irrepressibly.
“Forgive me, forgive me!” she said. “I cannot help it. O monsieur! I know not what it means. Love and hate, beauty and deformity, joy and suffering—I cannot understand. Nothing satisfies, and to be a Catholic makes the craving worse. Is it because I am only just beginning, and that I shall understand better by and by?”
He stood at a little distance from her, looking not at her at all, but upward and far away.