They were standing thus, as if bound by a spell, when a heavy waggon came creeping slowly along the bridge, making the spot on which they stood tremble and sway under their feet. ‘We are hanging by a thread between time and eternity,’ said Gerald, drawing closer to her. ‘What if the thread were to snap, and drop us, hand in hand, into the black gulf of death?’ She did not shudder at the thought, but turned and looked at him in the moonlight, with a strange sad smile. ‘Would you be glad?’ he asked softly. ‘Yes,’ she answered, between a sigh and a whisper, still looking up at him with that pathetic smile; and his eyes looked fondly down into hers, losing themselves in the depth of a fathomless mystery. ‘Do you know that this bridge is the second longest in the world, three hundred yards long, and a hundred and sixty-eight feet above the river?’ asked Edgar Turchill’s matter-of-fact tones, as he walked towards them, cheerful, contented, pleased with himself and all the world. ‘For God’s sake spare us a gush of second-hand Baedeker,’ cried Gerald with intense irritation. ‘As if any living soul, except a Cook’s tourist, could care how many feet or how many yards long a bridge is. It is the effect one values, the general idea that one is on that very bridge of Al Sirât, laid over the midst of hell, and finer than a hair, and sharper than the edge of a sword, over which the righteous must pass to Mahomet’s paradise. It is the notion of man’s audacity in making perilous ways that is really delightful. When that waggon went across just now, I thought the last straw was being laid, and we were all going.’ Edgar came round to Daphne with a calm air of proprietorship which made her shudder. ‘What an interesting evening we have had!’ he said. ‘Very.’ ‘You look pale and tired. Has it all been too much for you?’ he asked tenderly. ‘I think that organ would be too much for anyone.’ ‘Do you know—I am no judge, and you mustn’t laugh at me for expressing an opinion—I hardly thought it equal, as an organ, to the one at St. Paul’s. I took my mother there once when all the charity children were assembled. I can’t tell you what a grand sight it was, the dome crowded with their fresh young faces.’ ‘Oh, for pity’s sake don’t talk about it,’ cried Daphne, almost hysterically. ‘To compare that dark solemn cathedral, with just a few people dotted about among the shadows, and the thunder pealing over the roof—to compare such a scene with that pagan St. Paul’s, and the dome crowded with rosy-cheeked children, all white caps and pinafores and yellow worsted stockings!’ ‘I was talking of the organ,’ replied Edgar, somewhat offended. ‘Then why introduce the charity children? Oh, please let my thoughts dwell upon that dark church to-night; let me remember the music, the darkness.’ ‘Daphne, dearest one, you are crying,’ exclaimed Edgar, startled at the sound of a stifled sob. ‘Who would not cry at such music?’