cure your body with my hands because I am not a
saint, Mir Ho; but I think . . . ? he hesitated, amazed
at the words that were forming themselves in his
mind? CI think that I can send you to God with rny
hands, and that God who loves you will surely be
waiting/ Trembling, he laid his hands on her head:
'God/ he whispered,, CI ask You to take Mireio.5
She tried to shift her position very slightly so that
she might look up into his face, so that she might tell
him with her grateful eyes that in him she perceived
the image of God made manifest to her dumb under-
standing. • That in him and through him she had
reached a love that was deathless, since it was the love
of God which could make the most humble of lives
eternal. Then her head dropped gently away from
his touch, and over Mireio there came a great stillness.
Terrified and confounded Christophe stared at her
body growing chilly in death, and already unfamiliar:
'Mireio P he cried out like the grief-stricken child that
he was; 'Mireio, what have I done?' And he looked
at his work-scarred and merciful hands with fear, for
now he was very young — a little Provencal peasant
boy of eight years old who lived in Saint Loup and
who worked at a carpenter's bench with his father.
§3
Anfos it was who went to Jouse and begged his
permission to bury Mireio. Love for Christophe had
apparently sharpened his wits, and he thought that
the child might well be consoled if he knew that the
creature was decently buried.
Jouse was not inclined to refuse. He had found his
son in the shed that morning sitting dry-eyed and
speechless beside the body, and something in Chris-
tophe5 s stricken young face had touched the heart of
the father in Jouse. So now he said: 6C&spi, you may
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