he sacrificial bread.

Then, as he paused, with hands together--"_famulorum famularumque
tuarum"_--there opened out the world where his spirit was bending its
intention. Figure after figure came up and passed before his closed
eyes, and on each he turned the beam of God's grace. First Ralph,
sneering and aloof in his rich dress, intent on some Satanic
business;--Chris seized as it were the power of God, and enveloped and
penetrated him with it. Then Margaret, waiting terrified on the divine
will; his mother in her complacent bitterness; Mary; his father--and as
he thought of him it seemed as if all God's blessings were not too
great; Nicholas; his own brethren in religion, his Prior, contracted and
paralysed with terror; Dom Anthony, with his pathetic geniality....

Ah! how short was the time; and yet so long that the Prior looked up
sharply, and the deacon shifted in his rustling silk.

Then again the hands opened, and the stately flood of petition poured
on, as through open gates to the boundless sea that awaited it, where
the very heart of God was to absorb it into Itself.

The great names began to flit past, like palaces on a river-brink, their
bases washed by the pouring liturgy--Peter and Paul, Simon and Thaddeus,
Cosmas and Damian--vast pleasure houses alight with God, while near at
hand now gleamed the line of the infinite ocean.

The hands came together, arched in blessing; and it marked the first
sting of the healing water, as the Divine Essence pushed forward to meet
man's need.

_"Hanc igitur oblatianem ..._"

Then followed the swift silent signs, as if the pilot were ordering
sails out to meet the breeze.

The muttering voice sank to a deliberate whisper, the ripples ceased to
leap as the river widened, and Chris was delicately fingering the white
linen before taking the Host into his hands.

There was a swift glance up, as to the great Sun that burned overhead,
one more noiseless sign, and he sank forward in unutterable awe, with
his arms on the altar, and the white disc, hovering on the brink of
non-existence, beneath his eyes.

* * * * *

The faintest whisper rose from behind as the people shifted their
constrained attitudes. Sir James glanced up, his eyes full of tears, at
the distant crimson figure beneath the steady row of lights, motionless
with outspread hands, poised over the bosom of God's Love.

The first murmured words broke the silence; as if next to