“How devout you are getting, my dear!” said Madame Deberle one night, with a laugh.

Yes, it was true; Helene was widely opening the portals of her heart to pious thoughts.  Never could she have fancied that such happiness would attend her love.  She returned to the church as to a spot where her heart would melt, for under its roof she could give free vent to her tears, remain thoughtless, plunged in speechless worship.  For an hour each evening she put no restraint on herself.  The bursting love within her, prisoned throughout the day, at length escaped from her bosom on the wings of prayer, amidst the pious quiver of the throng.  The muttered supplications, the bendings of the knee, the reverences —­words and gestures seemingly interminable—­all lulled her to rest; to her they ever expressed the same thing; it was always the same passion speaking in the same phrase, or the same gesture.  She felt a need of faith, and basked enraptured by the Divine goodness.

Helene was not the only person whom Juliette twitted; she feigned a belief that Henri himself was becoming religious.  What, had he not now entered the church to wait for them?—­he, atheist and scoffer, who had been wont to assert that he had sought for the soul with his scalpel, and had not yet discovered its existence!  As soon as she perceived him standing behind a pillar in the shadow of the pulpit, she would instantly jog Helene’s arm.

“Look, look, he is there already!  Do you know, he wouldn’t confess when we got married!  See how funny he looks; he gazes at us with so comical an expression; quick, look!”

Helene did not at the moment raise her head.  The service was coming to an end, clouds of incense were rising, and the organ-music pealed forth joyfully.  But her neighbor was not a woman to leave her alone, and she was forced to speak in answer.

“Yes, yes, I see him,” she whispered, albeit she never turned her eyes.

She had on her own side divined his presence amidst the song of praise that mounted from the worshipping throng.  It seemed to her that Henri’s breath was wafted on the wings of the music and beat against her neck, and she imagined she could see behind her his glances shedding their light along the nave and haloing her, as she knelt, with a golden glory.  And then she felt impelled to pray with such fervor that words failed her.  The expression on his face was sober, as unruffled as any husband might wear when looking for ladies in a church, the same, indeed, as if he had been waiting for them in the lobby of a theatre.  But when they came together, in the midst of the slowly-moving crowd of worshippers, they felt that the bonds of their love had been drawn closer by the flowers and the chanting; and they shunned all conversation, for their hearts were on their lips.