“I love thee!” cried the priest.
Her tears suddenly ceased, she gazed at him with the look of an i***t. He had fallen on his knees and was devouring her with eyes of flame.
“Dost thou understand? I love thee!” he cried again.
“What love!” said the unhappy girl with a shudder.
He resumed,—
“The love of a damned soul.”
Both remained silent for several minutes, crushed beneath the weight of their emotions; he maddened, she stupefied.
“Listen,” said the priest at last, and a singular calm had come over him; “you shall know all I am about to tell you that which I have hitherto hardly dared to say to myself, when furtively interrogating my conscience at those deep hours of the night when it is so dark that it seems as though God no longer saw us. Listen. Before I knew you, young girl, I w
