Chapter 3 - Page 2

likeness to church pomps, but the
echo had ended by growing more distinct than the sound. The sound
now rang out, the type blazed at him with all its fires and with a
mystery of radiance in which endless meanings could glow. The
thing became as he sat there his appropriate altar and each starry
candle an appropriate vow. He numbered them, named them, grouped
them - it was the silent roll-call of his Dead. They made together
a brightness vast and intense, a brightness in which the mere
chapel of his thoughts grew so dim that as it faded away he asked
himself if he shouldn't find his real comfort in some material act,
some outward worship.

This idea took possession of him while, at a distance, the black-
robed lady continued prostrate; he was quietly thrilled with his
conception, which at last brought him to his feet in the sudden
excitement of a plan. He wandered softly through the aisles,
pausing in the different chapels, all save one applied to a special
devotion. It was in this clear recess, lampless and unapplied,
that he stood longest - the length of time it took him fully to
grasp the conception of gilding it with his bounty. He should
snatch it from no other rites and associate it with nothing
profane; he would simply take it as it should be given up to him
and make it a masterpiece of splendour and a mountain of fire.
Tended sacredly all the year, with the sanctifying church round it,
it would always be ready for his offices. There would be
difficulties, but from the first they presented themselves only as
difficulties surmounted. Even for a person so little affiliated
the thing would be a matter of arrangement. He saw it all in
advance, and how bright in especial the place would become to him
in the intermissions of toil and the dusk of afternoons; how rich
in assurance at all times, but especially in the indifferent world.
Before withdrawing he drew nearer again to the spot where he had
first sat down, and in the movement he met the lady whom he had
seen praying and who was now on her way to the door. She passed
him quickly, and he had only a glimpse of her pale face and her
unconscious, almost sightless eyes. For that instant she looked
faded and handsome.

This was the origin of the rites more public, yet certainly
esoteric, that he at last found himself able to establish. It took
a long time, it took a year, and both the process and the result
would have been - for any who knew - a vivid picture of his good
faith. No one did know, in fact - no one but the bland
ecclesiastics whose acquaintance he had promptly sought, whose
objections he had softly overridden, whose curiosity and sympathy
he had artfully charmed, whose assent to his eccentric munificence
he had eventually