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. And what rapture, what
felicity would then have been his! He would have given himself wholly
unto her, she would have been wholly his own, and he and she would have
lived again in the dear child that would doubtless have been born to
them. Ah! surely that alone was divine, the life which is complete, the
life which creates life! And then his reverie strayed: he pictured
himself married, and the thought filled him with such delight that he
asked why such a dream should be unrealisable? She knew no more than a
child of ten; he would educate her, form her mind. She would then
understand that this cure for which she thought herself indebted to the
Blessed Virgin, had in reality come to her from the Only Mother, serene
and impassive Nature. But even whilst he was thus settling things in his
mind, a kind of terror, born of his religious education, arose within
him.
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