grief."

"Your veil of innocence?" said the priest. "Then you have treated
Lucien with the sternest severity?"

"Oh, Father, how can you, who know him, ask me such a question!" she
replied with a smile. "Who can resist a god?"

"Do not be blasphemous," said the priest mildly. "No one can be like
God. Exaggeration is out of place with true love; you had not a pure
and genuine love for your idol. If you had undergone the conversion
you boast of having felt, you would have acquired the virtues which
are a part of womanhood; you would have known the charm of chastity,
the refinements of modesty, the two virtues that are the glory of a
maiden.--You do not love."

Esther's gesture of horror was seen by the priest, but it had no
effect on the impassibility of her confessor.

"Yes; for you love him for yourself and not for himself, for the
temporal enjoyments that delight you, and not for love itself. If he
has thus taken possession of you, you cannot have felt that sacred
thrill that is inspired by a being on whom God has set the seal of the
most adorable perfections. Has it never occurred to you that you would
degrade him by your past impurity, that you would corrupt a child by
the overpowering seductions which earned you your nickname glorious in
infamy? You have been illogical with yourself, and your passion of a
day----"

"Of a day?" she repeated, raising her eyes.