The old priest utters this exquisite sentiment, that perhaps the living whiteness of the girl's soul irradiates his thoughts, bleached, like his hair, by approaching death, while he now feels in his soul the dawn of a warm purity.

Then he murmurs to himself almost involuntarily: 'Abishag.' The girl asks: 'Who is Abishag ?' because she is ignorant like you two, who do not know Abishag, my first love.

The priest does not answer, but proceeds with the girl down the Rue des Laines.

She asks again who may be Abishag, and still the old man is silent.

Then appears that horrible black shadow, which comes and goes and at last vanishes at the sound of the twenty-four bells." "That is not correct," murmured Noemi.