Charity

     Delphine smoothed down her skirt, leaving the man lying on the bed sleeping.  She combed her curly hair back into place, grabbed her bag, then took a look around the room.

     Sacrifice was implict in a holy life.  One accepted hardship in order to be able to rise above it, steering one's natural inclinations away from fulfillment so that the gem-like heart of a saint might have room to grow.  It was a hard path, but Delphine had sought nothing else since she was a child.  As an adult woman she had grown only more aware of the higher reality.  Thanks to Père Philippe she had learned more about facing her demons with patience and concentration.  Nothing was what it seemed at first, the true nature of an act emerged only upon meditation, a consideration of its essence.

     Sleeping with the man in the red shirt might be slutty to some, but Magdalene was a friend of Christ's, Dephine reflected.  Eyeing the wallet by the bed Delphine thought herself a bit of a Magdalene, slipping it into her handbag, then, on tiptoe, making her way to the door of the apartment in Carcassonne and down the stairs.

     She walked to the bus stop and picked up the Tessier back to Caunes.

     Returning to her tiny home on one of the narrow 'ruelles', Delphine crept inside, so as not to wake her mother, who was sleeping in a chair near the fireplace.

     She walked up the narrow and vertiginous flight of stairs to her side of the house.  She took off her white clothes and showered, then crawled under the quilt, clean and fresh again.

     After several hours sleep, she awoke feeling alert and refreshed.  It was 10:00 a.m.  She had enough time to walk out of the village and up the road to Notre Dame du Cros in time to see Père Philippe before the Mass for the Feast of the Assumption.

     Her mother asked where she had been, her face bewildered.  "I told myself I would wait until this morning before I called the gendarmerie.  You know that last time they scolded me, when you walked in, right under their noses.  Delphine, please, please --the worry is going to kill me.  Try to stay home."

     Delphine was already on her way out the door, her mother's words resounding in the background, thinking of how surprised Père Phlippe would be when she handed him her gift for the Assumption collection.