The blue stone was black behind the gilded
grating, the figure was like a moulded shell holding some hidden form. The
light died; the purple and green faded from the nave--the East window was
dark--only the white altar and the whiter shadows above it hovered,
thinner light against deeper grey. As the light was withdrawn the
Cathedral seemed to grow in height until Brandon felt himself minute, and
the pillars sprang from the floor beneath him into unseen canopied
distance. He was cold; he longed suddenly, with a strange terror quite new
to him, for human company, and stumbled up and hurried down the choir,
almost falling over the stone steps, almost running through the long,
dark, deserted nave. He fancied that other steps echoed his own, that
voices whispered, and that figures thronged beneath the pillars to watch
him go. It was as though he were expelled.
Out in the evening air he was in his own world again. He was almost
tempted to return into the Cathedral to rid himself of the strange fancies
that he had had, so that they might not linger with him. He found himself
now on the farther side of the Cathedral, and after walking a little way
he was on the little narrow path that curved down through the green banks
to the river.
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