In the darkness her voice sounded alarmed, yet at the same time incredulous. He went on, repeating the breathless words of the servant:

‘It happened this morning, after she got the letter. All day long she was pale and refused to eat, and this evening she grew worse and fell into convulsions.’

He knew that he was exaggerating, and stopped: his mother did not speak. For a moment in the silence and the night there was a death-like tension, as though two enemies were seeking each other in the darkness and seeking in vain. Then the straw mattress creaked again; his mother must have raised herself to a sitting position in the high bed, because her clear voice now seemed to come from above.

‘Paul, who told you all this? Perhaps it is not true.’

Again he felt that it was his conscience speaking to him through her, but he answered at once:

‘It may be true. But that is not the question, mother. It is that I fear she may commit some folly. She is alone in the hands of servants, and I must see her.’

‘Paul!’

‘I must,’ he repeated, raising his voice almost to a shout; but it was himself he was trying to convince, not his mother.

‘Paul, you promised!’

‘I know I promised, and for that very reason I have come to tell you before I go. I tell you that it is necessary that I should go to her; my conscience bids me go.’

‘Tell me one thing, Paul: are you sure you saw the servant? Temptation plays evil tricks on us and the devil has many disguises.’

He did not quite understand her.

‘You think I am telling a lie? I saw the servant.’

‘Listen – last night I saw the old priest, and I thought I heard his footsteps again just now. Last night,’ she went on in a low voice, ‘he sat beside me before the fire. I actually saw him, I tell you: he had not shaved, and the few teeth he had left were black from too much smoking. And he had holes in his stockings. And he said, “I am alive and I am here, and very soon I shall turn you and your son out of the presbytery.” And he said I ought to have taught you your father’s trade if I did not wish you to fall into sin. He so upset my mind, Paul, that I don’t know whether I have acted rightly or wrongly! But I am absolutely sure that it was the devil sitting beside me last night, the spirit of evil. The servant you saw might have been temptation in another shape.’

He smiled in the darkness. Nevertheless, when he thought of the fantastic figure of the servant running across the meadow, he felt a vague sense of terror in spite of himself.

‘If you go there,’ continued his mother’s voice, ‘are you certain you will not fall again? Even if you really saw the servant and if that woman is really ill, are you sure not to fall?’