“You may be right or wrong to risk dying,” said the girl, simply; “the poor women in our village risk it whenever they have a baby.  You men are the other half of the world.  I know nothing about when you ought to die.  But surely if you are daring to try and find God beyond the grave and appeal to Him—­you ought to let Him find you when He comes and stands there every morning in our little church.”

And placid as she was, she made a little gesture of argument, of which the pathos wrung the heart.

M. Camille Bert was by no means placid.  Before that incomplete gesture and frankly pleading face he retreated as if from the jaws of a dragon.  His dark black hair and beard looked utterly unnatural against the startling pallor of his face.  When at last he said something it was:  “O God!  I can’t stand this!” He did not say it in French.  Nor did he, strictly speaking, say it in English.  The truth (interesting only to anthropologists) is that he said it in Scotch.

“There will be another mass in a matter of eight hours,” said Madeleine, with a sort of business eagerness and energy, “and you can do it then before the fighting.  You must forgive me, but I was so frightened that you would not do it at all.”

Bert seemed to crush his teeth together until they broke, and managed to say between them:  “And why should you suppose that I shouldn’t do as you say—­I mean not to do it at all?”

“You always go to Mass,” answered the girl, opening her wide blue eyes, “and the Mass is very long and tiresome unless one loves God.”

Then it was that Bert exploded with a brutality which might have come from Count Gregory, his criminal opponent.  He advanced upon Madeleine with flaming eyes, and almost took her by the two shoulders.  “I do not love God,” he cried, speaking French with the broadest Scotch accent; “I do not want to find Him; I do not think He is there to be found.  I must burst up the show; I must and will say everything.  You are the happiest and honestest thing I ever saw in this godless universe.  And I am the dirtiest and most dishonest.”

Madeleine looked at him doubtfully for an instant, and then said with a sudden simplicity and cheerfulness:  “Oh, but if you are really sorry it is all right.  If you are horribly sorry it is all the better.  You have only to go and tell the priest so and he will give you God out of his own hands.”

“I hate your priest and I deny your God!” cried the man, “and I tell you God is a lie and a fable and a mask.  And for the first time in my life I do not feel superior to God.”

“What can it all mean?” said Madeleine, in massive wonder.

“Because I am a fable also and a mask,” said the man.  He had been plucking fiercely at his black beard and hair all the time; now he suddenly plucked them off and flung them like moulted feathers in the mire.  This extraordinary spoliation left in the sunlight the same face, but a much younger head—­a head with close chestnut curls and a short chestnut beard.