'Yes, I do love you. I suffered grievously the other day after I had driven you away. . . . Oh! I loved you with such passion that, had you come back and thrown yourself in my arms, I should almost have crushed you to death. . . . And for hours your image remained present before me. When I shut my eyes, you gleamed out with all the brightness of the sun and threw a flame around me. . . . Then I trampled down every obstacle, and came here.'
He remained silent for a moment, as if in thought. Then he spoke again:
'And now my arms feel as though they were broken. If I tried to clasp you, I could not hold you; I should let you fall. . . . Wait till this shudder has passed away. Give me your hands, and let me kiss them again. Be gentle and do not look at me with such angry eyes. Help me to find my heart again.'
He spoke with such genuine sadness, such evident longing to begin the past anew, that Albine was touched. For a moment all her wonted gentleness returned to her, and she questioned him anxiously:
'What is the matter with you? What makes you so ill?'
'I do not know. It is as though all my blood had left my veins. Just now, as I was coming here, I felt as if some one had flung a robe of ice around my shoulders, which turned me into stone from head to foot. . . . I have felt it before, but where I don't remember.'
She interrupted him with a kindly laugh.
'You are a child. You have caught cold, that's all. At any rate, it is not I that you are afraid of, is it? We won't stop in the garden during the winter, like a couple of wild things. We will go wherever you like, to some big town. We can love each other there, amongst all the people, as quietly as amongst the trees. You will see that I can be something else than a wilding, for ever bird's-nesting and tramping about for hours. When I was a little girl, I used to wear embroidered skirts and fine stockings and laces and all kinds of finery. I dare say you never heard of that.'
He was not listening to her. He suddenly gave vent to a little cry, and said: 'Ah! now I recollect!'
She asked him what he meant, but he would not answer her. He had just remembered the feeling he had long ago experienced in the chapel of the seminary. That was the icy robe enwrapping his shoulders and turning him to stone. And then his life as a priest took complete possession of his thoughts. The vague recollections which had haunted him as he walked from Les Artaud to the Paradou became more and more distinct and assumed complete mastery over him. While Albine talked on of the happy life that they would lead together, he heard the tinkling of the sanctuary bell that signalled the elevation of the Host, and he saw the monstrance trace gleaming crosses over the heads of kneeling multitudes.
'And for your sake,' Albine was saying, 'I will put on my broidered skirts again. . . . I want you to be bright and gay. We will try to find something to make you lively. Perhaps you will love me better when you see me looking beautiful and prettily dressed, like a fine lady. I will wear my comb properly and won't let my hair fall wildly about my neck any more. And I won't roll my sleeves up over my elbows; I will fasten my dress so as to hide my shoulders. I still know how to bow and how to walk along quite properly. Yes, I will make you a nice little wife, as I walk through the streets leaning on your arm.'
'Did you ever go to church when you were a little girl?' he asked her in an undertone, as if, in spite of himself, he were continuing aloud the reverie which prevented him from hearing her. 'I could never pass a church without entering it. As soon as the door closed silently behind me, I felt as though I were in Paradise itself, with the angels whispering stories of love in my ears and the saints caressing me with their breath. Ah! I would have liked to live there for ever, in that absorbing beatitude.'
She looked at him with steady eyes, a passing blaze kindling in her loving glance. Nevertheless, submissive still, she answered:
'I will do as you may fancy. I learned music once. I was quite a clever young lady and was taught all the accomplishments. I will go back to school and start music again. If there is any tune you would like to hear me play, you will only have to tell me, and I will practise it for months and months, so as to play it to you some evening in our own home when we are by ourselves in some snug little room, with the curtains closely drawn. And you will pay me with just one kiss, won't you? A kiss right on the lips, which will awaken all your love again!'
'Yes, yes,' he murmured, answering his own thoughts only; 'my great pleasure at first was to light the candles, prepare the cruets, and carry the missal. Then, afterwards, I was filled with bliss at the approach of God, and felt as though I could die of sheer love. Those are my only recollections. I know of nothing else. When I raise my hand, it is to give a benediction. When my lips protrude it is to kiss the altar. If I look for my heart, I can no longer find it. I have offered it to God, and He has taken it.'
Albine grew very pale and her eyes gleamed like fire. In a quivering voice she resumed:
'I should not like my little girl to leave me. You can send the boy to college, if you wish, but the little girl must always keep with me. I myself will teach her to read. Oh! I shall remember everything, and if indeed there be anything that I find I have forgotten, I will have masters to teach me. . . . Yes, we will keep our dear little ones always about our knees. You will be happy so, won't you? Speak to me; tell me that you will then feel warm again, and will smile, and feel no regrets for anything you have left behind.'
But Serge continued:
'I have often thought of the stone-saints that have been censed in their niches for centuries past. They must have become quite saturated with incense; and I am like one of them. I have the fragrance of incense in the inmost parts of my being. It is that embalmment that gives me serenity, deathlike tranquillity of body, and the peace which I enjoy in no longer living. . . . Ah! may nothing ever disturb my quiescence! May I ever remain cold and rigid, with a ceaseless smile on my granite lips, incapable of descending among men! That is my one, my only desire!'
At this Albine sprang to her feet, exasperated, threatening. She shook Serge and cried:
'What are you saying? What is it you are dreaming aloud? Am I not your wife? Haven't you come here to be my husband?'
He recoiled, trembling yet more violently.
'No! Leave me! I am afraid!' he faltered.
'But our life together, our happiness, the children we shall have?'
'No, no; I am afraid.' And he broke out into a supreme cry: 'I cannot! I cannot!'
For a moment Albine remained silent, gazing at the unhappy man who lay shivering at her feet. Her face flared. She opened her arms as if to seize him and strain him to her breast with wild angry passion. But another idea came to her, and she merely took him by the hand and raised him to his feet.
'Come!' said she.
She led him away to that giant tree, to the very spot where their love had reigned supreme. There was the same bliss-inspiring shade, there was the same trunk as of yore, the same branches spreading far around, like sheltering and protecting arms. The tree still towered aloft, kindly, robust, powerful, and fertile. As on the day of their nuptials, languorous warmth, the glimmer of a summer's night fading on the bare shoulder of some fair girl, a sob of love dying away into passionate silence, lingered about the clearing as it lay there bathed in dim green light. And, in the distance, the Paradou, in spite of the first chills of autumn, sighed once more with passion, again becoming love's accomplice. From the parterre, from the orchard, from the meadow-lands, from the forest, from the great rocks, from the spreading heavens, came back a ripple of voluptuous joy. Never had the garden, even on the warmest evenings of spring-time, shown such deep tenderness as now, on this fair autumn evening, when the plants and trees seemed to be bidding one another goodnight ere they sank to sleep. And the scent of ripened germs wafted the intoxication of desire athwart the scanty leaves.