‘Suppose we go into the choir,’ said De Stancy presently. ‘Nobody sits out here in the shadows.’ ‘This is sufficiently near, and we have a candle,’ Paula murmured. Before another minute had passed the candle flame began to drown in its own grease, slowly dwindled, and went out. ‘I suppose that means I am to go into the choir in spite of myself. Heaven is on your side,’ said Paula. And rising they left their now totally dark corner, and joined the noiseless shadowy figures who in twos and threes kept passing up the nave. Within the choir there was a blaze of light, partly from the altar, and more particularly from the image of the saint whom they had assembled to honour, which stood, surrounded by candles and a thicket of flowering plants, some way in advance of the foot-pace. A secondary radiance from the same source was reflected upward into their faces by the polished marble pavement, except when interrupted by the shady forms of the officiating priests. When it was over and the people were moving off, De Stancy and his companion went towards the saint, now besieged by numbers of women anxious to claim the respective flower-pots they had lent for the decoration. As each struggled for her own, seized and marched off with it, Paula remarked--‘This rather spoils the solemn effect of what has gone before.’ ‘I perceive you are a harsh Puritan.’ ‘No, Captain De Stancy! Why will you speak so? I am far too much otherwise. I have grown to be so much of your way of thinking, that I accuse myself, and am accused by others, of being worldly, and half-and-half, and other dreadful things--though it isn’t that at all.’ They were now walking down the nave, preceded by the sombre figures with the pot flowers, who were just visible in the rays that reached them through the distant choir screen at their back; while above the grey night sky and stars looked in upon them through the high clerestory windows. ‘Do be a little MORE of my way of thinking!’ rejoined De Stancy passionately. ‘Don’t, don’t speak,’ she said rapidly. ‘There are Milly and Champreau!’ Milly was one of the maids, and Champreau the courier and valet who had been engaged by Abner Power. They had been sitting behind the other pair throughout the service, and indeed knew rather more of the relations between Paula and De Stancy than Paula knew herself. Hastening on the two latter went out, and walked together silently up the short street. The Place St. Denis was now lit up, lights shone from the hotel windows, and the world without the cathedral had so far advanced in nocturnal change that it seemed as if they had been gone from it for hours. Within the hotel they found the change even greater than without. Mrs. Goodman met them half-way on the stairs. ‘Poor Charlotte is worse,’ she said. ‘Quite feverish, and almost delirious.’ Paula reproached herself with ‘Why did I go away!’