This was the veritable death, that she should cease to love him.

He buried his face in his hands, and tried to bring her image before his mind’s eye, then he began to reproach her for those things for which she might justly have reproached him.

‘Agnes, you cannot forget your promises! How can you forget them? You held my wrists in your two strong hands and said to me: “We are bound to each other for ever, in life and in death.” Is it possible that you can forget? You said, you know …’

His fingers gripped at his collar, for he was suffocating with his distress.

‘The devil has caught me in his snare,’ he thought, and remembered the hare who had gnawed off her own foot.

He drew a deep breath, rose from his chair, and took up the lamp. He determined to conquer his will, to gnaw his own flesh also if thereby he could only free himself. Now he decided to go up to his room, but as he moved towards the hall he saw his mother sitting in her accustomed place in the silent kitchen, and beside her was Antiochus fast asleep. He went to the door:

‘Why is that boy still here?’ he asked.

His mother looked at him hesitatingly: she would have preferred not to answer, but to have hidden Antiochus behind her wide skirts in order that Paul should not wait up any longer, but go to his room and to bed. Her faith in him was now completely restored, but she too thought of the devil and his snares. At this moment, however, Antiochus woke up and remembered very well why he was still waiting there, in spite of the fact that the woman had several times asked him to go.

‘I was waiting here because my mother is expecting a visit from you,’ he explained.

‘But is this a time of night to go paying visits?’ protested the priest’s mother. ‘Come now, be off with you, and tell her that Paul is tired and will go and see her to-morrow.’

She spoke to the boy, but she was looking at her son: she saw his glassy eyes fixed upon the lamp, but his eyelids quivered like the wings of a moth in a candle.

Antiochus got up with an expression of deep disappointment.

‘But my mother is expecting him; she thinks it’s something important.’

‘If it was anything important he would go and tell her at once. Come, be off with you!’

She spoke sharply, and as Paul looked at her his eyes lit up again with quick resentment: he saw that his mother was afraid lest he should go out again, and the knowledge filled him with unreasoning anger. He banged the lamp down on the table again and called to Antiochus:

‘We will go and see your mother.’

In the hall, however, he turned and added:

‘I shall be back directly, mother; don’t fasten the door.’

She had not moved from where she sat, but when the two had left the house she went to peep through the half-open door and saw them cross the moonlit square and enter the wine-shop, which was still lighted up. Then she went back to the kitchen and began her vigil as on the previous night.