And yet now when his eyes met hers, they suddenly took on a wonderful softness, that quaint look--half-whimsical, half appealing--came back to them and with it too a look of infinite pity and of unswerving love; and as she caught the glance--she who felt so lonely and so desolate--there came to her mind the remembrance of the sweet and pathetic story of the primeval woman who was driven forth by God’s angel from the gates of Paradise. Somehow she felt that once--not so very long ago--she too had wandered for a brief while within the peaceful glades of a Paradise of her own, and that now an angel with a flaming sword stood at its gates and would not allow her to return, but forced her to wander out through life in utter loneliness and with the unbearable load of agonising remorse. II Of all the episodes which the historical records of the time present to the imagination, not one perhaps is quite so moving and so inspiring as that of the solemn Mass which was offered up in every church of the stricken city on this Sunday morning--the feast of the Holy Redeemer--when the Duke of Alva and the members of his odious Blood Council knelt side by side with the heroic men who were making their last desperate stand for justice, for liberty and the sanctity of their homes. The Lieutenant-Governor and the Spanish high dignitaries, both civil and military, are present in the Cathedral of St. Baafs, as are also the Orangist leaders. The Spaniards occupy one side of the aisle, the Flemings, with the women and children, are on the other, and crowd every corner of the stately edifice. Up at the high altar, Father van der Schlicht is officiating with others of the cathedral clergy, and the pure voices of the choir boys resound through the building like the call of the angels of peace. The fabric of the exquisite building bears traces of that awful fate which an abominable tyranny was reserving for the entire city. The walls themselves stand, but in places they are torn by large fissures, which look like gaping wounds in the flesh of a giant. Reverend hands have hastily swept aside the debris of glass and masonry, the fragments of stone statues and scraps of iron and wood; but here and there the head of an angel, the clasped hands of a saint or palm of a martyr, still litter the floor; the slender columns of the aisle have taken on a curious rusty tint, and over the screen the apostles of carved wood are black with smoke. There are two large holes in the roof, through which the bleak October breeze comes sighing in, and the sweet smell of stale incense which usually hangs about the place of worship has yielded to the pungent odour of charred wood and of singed draperies.