cient to break the total obscurity to eyes accustomed for some
minutes to no light at all. The church stood, too, on a little eminence
in the city, where the air without was less murky and impenetrable with
the night mists, and though there was no moon the high upper windows
of the nave were distinctly visible in the gloomy height like great
lancet-shaped patches of gray upon a black ground.

In the dimness, all objects took vast and mysterious proportions. A huge
giant reared his height against one of the pillars, crowned with a high,
pointed crown, stretching out one great shadowy hand into the gloom--the
tall pulpit was there, as Unorna knew, and the hand was the wooden
crucifix standing out in its extended socket. The black confessionals,
too, took shape, like monster nuns, kneeling in their heavy hoods and
veils, with heads inclined, behind the fluted pilasters, just within the
circle of the feeble chapel lights. Within the choir, the deep shadows
seemed to fill the carved stalls with the black ghosts of long dead
sisters, returned to their familiar seats out of the damp crypt below.
The great lectern in the midst of the half circle behind the high altar
became a hideous skeleton, headless, its straight arms folded on its
bony breast. The back of the high altar itself was a great throne
whereon sat in judgment a misty being of awful form, judging the dead
women all through the lonely night. The stillness was appalling. Not a
rat stirred.

Unorna shuddered, not at what she saw, but at what she felt. She had
reached the place, and the doing of the deed was at hand. Beatrice stood
beside her erect, asleep, motionless, her dark face just outlined in the
surrounding dusk.

Unorna took her hand and led her forwards. She could see now, and the
moment had come. She brought Beatrice before the high altar and made
her stand in front of it. Then she herself went back and groped for
something in the dark. It was the pair of small wooden steps upon
which the priest mounts in order to open the golden door of the high
tabernacle above the altar, when it is necessary to take therefrom the
Sacred Host for the Benediction, or other consecrated wafers for the
administration of the Communion. To all Christians, of all denominations
whatsoever, the bread-wafer when once consecrated is a holy thing. To
Catholics and Lutherans there is there, substantially, the Presence of
God. No imaginable act of sacrilege can be more unpardonable th