The Altar of the Dead Part 3

"You're very ill-you shouldn't be here," she urged in anxious reply.

"G.o.d sent me too, I think. I was ill when I came, but the sight of you does wonders." He held her hands, which steadied and quickened him.

"I've something to tell you."

"Don't tell me!" she tenderly pleaded; "let me tell you. This afternoon, by a miracle, the sweetest of miracles, the sense of our difference left me. I was out-I was near, thinking, wandering alone, when, on the spot, something changed in my heart. It's my confession-there it is. To come back, to come back on the instant-the idea gave me wings. It was as if I suddenly saw something-as if it all became possible. I could come for what you yourself came for: that was enough. So here I am. It's not for my own-that's over. But I'm here for _them_." And breathless, infinitely relieved by her low precipitate explanation, she looked with eyes that reflected all its splendour at the magnificence of their altar.

"They're here for you," Stransom said, "they're present to-night as they've never been. They speak for you-don't you see?-in a pa.s.sion of light; they sing out like a choir of angels. Don't you hear what they say?-they offer the very thing you asked of me."

"Don't talk of it-don't think of it; forget it!" She spoke in hushed supplication, and while the alarm deepened in her eyes she disengaged one of her hands and pa.s.sed an arm round him to support him better, to help him to sink into a seat.

He let himself go, resting on her; he dropped upon the bench and she fell on her knees beside him, his own arm round her shoulder. So he remained an instant, staring up at his shrine. "They say there's a gap in the array-they say it's not full, complete. Just one more," he went on, softly-"isn't that what you wanted? Yes, one more, one more."

"Ah no more-no more!" she wailed, as with a quick new horror of it, under her breath.

"Yes, one more," he repeated, simply; "just one!" And with this his head dropped on her shoulder; she felt that in his weakness he had fainted.

But alone with him in the dusky church a great dread was on her of what might still happen, for his face had the whiteness of death.