"Avoided them," he muttered now, as he sat there in the dark, watching the sacred lamp that burned unceasingly above the high altar, but still engaged always in peering into the deep shadows and blackness in which the huge pile was now enveloped--"avoided them. O God, how have I avoided them! Yet, drawn irresistibly to where they were. Little does he know how I have seen him officiating at his own church, or she how I have passed her close, though unseen; even peered into her room at night from the street, when, dragged here by--by--the fierce desire to stand again upon the spot where--where he fell. Once, too, she felt, unwittingly, my presence. As I brushed against her in the street she shuddered and drew back from me. Something revealed that one accursed had touched her." He moaned aloud as he sat there, his head buried in his hands; then, because his mind was now disordered and he was half mad, half sane, a smile came on the evil face that he turned up as the moon's rays came through the great rose window and lighted all the nave. "Yet," he murmured, "it was in the confessional under the seal of confession. If it was Douglas's brother, he can do naught. Naught! Confession is sacred. That seal cannot be broken. But was it he? Was it? Was it? "His face I could not see, but the tones were like unto his," he continued. "And once he started--I am certain of it. O God, have I told his brother all? His brother! His brother!" Above, from the great tower, there boomed the striking of the hour--midnight. And again he shuddered and moaned and whispered with white lips: "The very hour, the hour that I cannot hear, can never hear again, without agony and horror unspeakable. The hour told by the same clock that told it on that night of blood. I must go," he wailed in low, broken tones, "must go there. He draws me to the spot; I see his finger beckoning me nightly. His eyes met mine once, a month ago, as I reached Paris. I thought I was free and had escaped, yet they dragged me back to this accursed spot. I must go. I must go. He waits for me. Ever--ever when the moon is near her full. I am absolved by him, his brother, yet he is always beckoning me and makes me go." A hand fell on his shoulder as he sat there, and he started up with almost a shriek, and with his own hand thrust in his breast--perhaps to draw some hidden knife, perhaps to still the leap his heart gave. "Monsieur," a voice said, the voice of the old sacristan, "permit that I disturb your pious meditations. But all are gone now, including the priests. The cathedral is about to close." "Yes, yes," he muttered low, "I will go. I will go. I have stayed too long." "By the west door, if it pleases monsieur. It is the only one open."