He felt a longing that
the place should return his love and tenderness. The passion of his life
was here; he knew to-night, as he had never before, the life of its own
that this place had, and as he stayed there, motionless in the centre of
the nave, some doubt stole into his heart as to whether, after all, he and
it were one and indivisible, as for so long he had believed. Take this
away, and what was left to him? His son had gone, his wife and daughter
were strange to him; if this, too, went....
The sudden chill sense of loneliness was awful to him. All those naked and
sightless eyes staring from those embossed tombs were menacing, scornful,
deriding.
He had never known such a mood, and he wondered suddenly whether these
last months had affected his brain.
He had never doubted during the last ten years his power over this and its
gratitude to him for what he had done: now, in this chill and green-hued
air, it seemed not to care for him at all.
He moved up into the choir and sat down in his familiar stall; all that he
could see--his eyes seemed to be drawn by some will stronger than his own
--was the Black Bishop's Tomb.
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