Therein
lay the bare, bleeding sore. The truth burst upon him with blinding
cruelty and certainty--she was saved, he was lost. That pretended miracle
which had restored her to life had, in him, completed the ruin of all
belief in the supernatural. That which he had, for a moment, dreamed of
seeking, and perhaps finding, at Lourdes,--naive faith, the happy faith
of a little child,--was no longer possible, would never bloom again after
that collapse of the miraculous, that cure which Beauclair had foretold,
and which had afterwards come to pass, exactly as had been predicted.
Jealous! No--he was not jealous; but he was ravaged, full of mortal
sadness at thus remaining all alone in the icy desert of his
intelligence, regretting the illusion, the lie, the divine love of the
simpleminded, for which henceforth there was no room in his heart.
A flood of bitterness stifled him, and tears started from his eyes. He
had slipped on to the flagstones, prostrated by his anguish. And, by
degrees, he remembered the whole delightful story, from the day when
Marie, guessing how he was tortured by doubt, had become so passionately
eager for his conversion, taking hold of his hand in the gloom, retaining
it in her own, and stammering that she would pray for him--oh! pray for
him with her whole soul.
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