"Are you comfortable, Marie?" gently inquired Pierre. "Don't you feel
chilly?"
She had just shivered. But it was only at a breath from the other world,
which had seemed to her to come from the Grotto.
"No, no, I am so comfortable! Only place the shawl over my knees.
And--thank you, Pierre--don't be anxious about me. I no longer require
anyone now that I am with her."
Her voice died away, she was already falling into an ecstasy, her hands
clasped, her eyes raised towards the white statue, in a beatific
transfiguration of the whole of her poor suffering face.
Yet Pierre remained a few minutes longer beside her. He would have liked
to wrap her in the shawl, for he perceived the trembling of her little
wasted hands. But he feared to annoy her, so confined himself to tucking
her in like a child; whilst she, slightly raised, with her elbows on the
edges of her box, and her eyes fixed on the Grotto, no longer beheld him.
A bench stood near, and he had just seated himself upon it, intending to
collect his thoughts, when his glance fell upon a woman kneeling in the
gloom. Dressed in black, she was so slim, so discreet, so unobtrusive, so
wrapt in darkness, that at first he had not noticed her. After a while,
however, he recognised her as Madame Maze. The thought of the letter
which she had received during the day then recurred to him. And the sight
of her filled him with pity; he could feel for the forlornness of this
solitary woman, who had no physical sore to heal, but only implored the
Blessed Virgin to relieve her heart-pain by converting her inconstant
husband.
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