"Just as a mountain stream is turned from its course by some
insuperable barrier, the poor girl, with no means of making her
affection known to the object of it, found consolation in very
insignificant ways: to secure his notice for a moment, to be able to
render him any slight service, and to fancy that she was of use to him
was enough, and she may have said to herself, who can tell? he is
a man after all, and he may perhaps be touched in reality and only
restrained from showing that he is through discipline. All these
efforts broke against a bar of iron, a wall of ice. The priest
maintained the same cool reserve. She was the daughter of the man for
whom he felt the greatest respect; but she was a woman. Oh! if he had
avoided her, if he had treated her harshly, that would have been a
triumph and a proof that she had made his heart beat for her, but
there was something terrible about his unvarying politeness and his
utter disregard of the most potent signs of affection. He made no
attempt to keep her at a distance, but merely continued steadfastly to
treat her as a mere abstraction.
"After the lapse of a certain time things got very bad. Rejected and
heartbroken, she began to waste away, and her eye grew haggard, but
she put a restraint upon herself, no one knew her secret! 'What,' she
would say to herself,' I cannot attract his notice for a moment; he
will not even acknowledge my existence; do what I will, I can only
be for him a _shadow_, a phantom, one soul among a hundred others.
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