Oh, that heavenly voice, with its soul-moving sadness! A rush of tears streamed from her eyes; she stretched out her hands unconsciously, as if yearning for some human touch to break the mournful spell of that divine sorrow, and the hand nearest Gerald was clasped in the darkness; clasped by a warm strong hand which held it and kept it—kept it without a struggle, for, alas! it lay unresistingly in his. They drew a little nearer to each other involuntarily, shudderingly happy—with the deep sense of an unpardonable guilt, a shameful treason; yet forgetting everything except that vain foolish love against which both had fought long and valiantly. A peal of thunder on the organ within, an answering peal from the storm without. The mimic tempest blended itself with heaven’s own artillery; and at the terrible sound those guilty creatures in the church let go each other’s hands. Daphne clasped hers before her face, and sank on her knees. ‘Pity me and help me, O God!’ she prayed, and looking up she saw just above her in a marble niche the image of the Mother of God; and in this moment of temptation and self-abandonment, it seemed to her a natural thing that women should ask a woman’s mediation in their hour of sorrow. A funeral hymn of Sebastian Bach’s pealed from the organ with an awful grandeur which thrilled every listener; and then came a silence, and after that the low murmur of the storm dying away in the distance, from the overture to ‘William Tell,’ the flutelike tones of the ‘_Ranz des Vaches_,’ telling of pastoral valleys and solemn mountains, a life of Arcadian innocence and peace. With those lighter, gayer strains the concert ended, and they all went slowly and silently out of the church. The storm was over, and the moon was breaking through dark clouds. ‘Don’t let us go back in that jingling abomination of a fly,’ said Gerald, striding on over the wet pavement, leaving the two girls to follow with Edgar Turchill. They picked their way through the streets. The town was all dark and quiet, save for a glimmering yellow candle here and there under a gable; there was none of the brightness and out-of-door life of a French town. A couple of omnibuses and a fly or two carried off the people who had been in the cathedral to their several hotels. Gerald Goring was waiting for them in front of the Zähringer. ‘What made you hurry on so?’ asked Madoline wonderingly.