the Church; we will pray there awhile/ And he laid
a thin hand on his pupil's arm.
Jan nodded, but his eyes were still resentful.

That night the Cure sat huddled in his chair; he was
feeling old and unusually tired: 1 am nearly seventy
now/ he thought; cit is therefore quite natural that I
should feel old/ But he knew that it was not the passing
of the years that caused him to sit huddled up in his
chair; rather was it a doubt that harassed his soul.
'And yet I have acted wisely;' he argued, *I cannot
allow him to go until I must. It is surely my duty to
keep the boy near me at this the most critical juncture
of his life. Who will guard him from spiritual harm
if he goes while these fleshly longings are so heavy
upon him?'
Yet he dared not look into his aching heart, dared
not face the real fear that lay in that heart together
with the well-nigh hopeless hope that when Jan was
eighteen the war would be over. Madame de Berac's
only son had been killed. It was strange how this
happening had brought things home. A young man
whom the Cure had never seen had been killed, God
knew how, in some distant battle, and all of a sudden
that man had been Jan, and the battlefield the Cure's
own study.
On the following Sunday he had preached very
badly: 'He was dull this morning,' people had
grumbled, missing the violence he had taught them to
expect, cmais oui, that sermon was more like the old
days/ They had felt defrauded, almost resentful,
for the Cure's war-sermons were now quite well
known: there were those who would come several
miles to hear them.
The Cure got up and stood lost in thought, rubbing
his chin and puckering his forehead. What had he
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