Felicity took a liking to them. She bought them bedclothes, shirts, a cooking stove; evidently they were exploiting her. This weakness irritated Madame Aubain, who, besides, didn’t like the familiarities of the nephew, for he talked to her son as to an equal; and, as Virginia had a cough, and the weather was no longer good, she returned to Pont-l’Évêque.

Monsieur Bourais gave her advice on the choice of a school. The one at Caen was considered the best. Paul was sent there, and said good-bye stoutly, pleased to go and live in a house where he would have comrades.

Madame Aubain resigned herself to the separation from her son because it was indispensable. Virginia thought of it less and less. Felicity missed the noise he made. But an occupation came along to distract her. Starting at Christmas, she took the little girl every day to Catechism.

III

When she had made a genuflexion at the door she walked on under the high nave between the double row of chairs, opened Madame Aubain’s pew, sat down, and looked all round her. The boys on the right, the girls on the left, filled the stalls of the choir; the priest stood near the lectern; on a stained-glass window in the apse the Holy Ghost hovering over the virgin; another showed her on her knees before the Infant Jesus, and behind the ciborium a group carved in wood represented Saint Michael subduing the dragon.

The priest gave them first a short account of Sacred History. She thought she saw Paradise, the deluge, the tower of Babel, cities in flames, peoples dying, idols overthrown; and she retained from this state of amazement respect for the Most High, and fear of His wrath. Then she wept, listening to the Passion. Why had they crucified Him, this One who loved the children, who fed the multitudes, who cured the blind, and had desired, in His gentleness, to be born amid the poor, on the dung of a stable? Seed time, harvest, the winepress, all the familiar things of which the Gospel speaks, existed in her life; the passage of God had sanctified them; and she loved the lambs more tenderly for love of the Lamb of God, the doves because of the Holy Ghost.

She had trouble in imagining its shape; for it was not only a bird, but besides that, a fire, and at other times a breath. Maybe it was its light that flickered at nights on the edge of the marshes, its breath that pushed the clouds, its voice that made the bells ring sweetly; and she stayed in adoration, enjoying the freshness of the walls and the tranquillity of the church.

As to the dogmas, she understood none of them, did not even try to understand them. The priest discoursed, the children recited, she finished by going to sleep; and woke up suddenly when, as they came out, their wooden shoes clattered on the flagstones.

It was in this way, by dint of hearing it, that she learned the catechism, her religious education having been neglected in her youth; and from that time she imitated all the practices of Virginia, fasting as she did, going to confession with her. On Corpus Christi day together they erected a street altar.

She worried about the first communion in advance. She was in a flutter about the slippers, about the wreath, about the book, about the gloves. With what inner tremblings she helped her mother dress her!

All through the Mass she was in an agony. Monsieur Bourais hid a part of the choir from her; but just in front the flock of girls, wearing their white crowns over their lowered veils, formed as it were a field of snow; and she recognized from afar her dear little one by her dainty neck and contemplative attitude. The bells rang out: heads bent: there was a silence. To an outburst of organ music the choristers and the congregation began to sing the Agnus Dei; then the march past of the boys began; and after them the girls rose. Step by step, and hands joined in prayer, they went towards the altar, ablaze with candles, knelt on the first step, received in turn the wafer, and in the same order returned and knelt in their places. When it was Virginia’s turn Felicity bent forward to see her, and with the imagination which true tenderness bestows, it seemed to her that she herself was this child. Virginia’s face became her own, her dress