Then,
healed, beside herself, transported with love and gratitude, whirled with
her little car up the inclined ways to the Basilica, she had thought her
prayers granted, and had cried aloud the joy she felt that they should
have both been saved, together, together! Ah! that lie which he, prompted
by affection and charity, had told, that error in which he had from that
moment suffered her to remain, with what a weight did it oppress his
heart! It was the heavy slab which walled him in his voluntarily chosen
sepulchre. He remembered the frightful attack of grief which had almost
killed him in the gloom of the crypt, his sobs, his brutal revolt, his
longing to keep her for himself alone, to possess her since he knew her
to be his own--all that rising passion of his awakened manhood, which
little by little had fallen asleep again, drowned by the rushing river of
his tears; and in order that he might not destroy the divine illusion
which possessed her, yielding to brotherly compassion, he had taken that
heroic vow to lie to her, that vow which now filled him with such
anguish.
Pierre shuddered amidst his reverie. Would he have the strength to keep
that vow forever? Had he not detected a feeling of impatience in his
heart even whilst he was waiting for her at the railway station, a
jealous longing to leave that Lourdes which she loved too well, in the
vague hope that she might again become his own, somewhere far away? If he
had not been a priest he would have married her.
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