Parphenas went down to the church, which was lighted by a single lamp, placed before the old ivory-carved diptych. Two large sapphires in the aureole of Jesus, who was sitting on the Virgin's arm, had been carried off by the Pagans, and transferred to their original setting in the Temple of Dionysus. These black hollows in the yellow ivory were to Parphenas wounds in some living body. "No, I cannot bear it," he murmured, kissing the hand of the Infant Jesus. "I cannot bear it; 'twould be better to die!" These sacrilegious marks in the ivory tortured and angered him more than outrage on a human being. In a corner of the church he discovered a rope-ladder, used in lighting chapel-lamps. Carrying this ladder he went forth into a narrow passage leading to the outer gate, in front of which the fat brother-cellarer, Chorys, was snoring on the straw. Parphenas glided past like a shadow. The lock of the door made a grinding noise. Chorys sat unblinking, and then rolled round on the straw. Parphenas leapt over a low wall and found himself in the deserted street, into which the full moon was shining. There was a low roar of the sea. The young monk went along the Temple of Dionysus up to a point in which the wall was plunged in shadow. Thence he threw up the rope-ladder, so that it hooked itself to the metal pinnacle which decorated the corner. The ladder swung from the claw of a sphinx. The monk clambered by it to the roof. Far off, cocks crew; a dog barked; and then again came silence, measured only by the slow sighings of the sea. Parphenas threw the ladder down the inner wall of the temple, and descended. The eyes of the god, two lengthy sapphires, shone with intense vividness in the moonlight, gazing down on the monk. Parphenas, thrilled by the silence, trembled and crossed himself. He clambered on to the altar where Julian had offered the sacrifice, and his heels felt the warmth of the half-extinguished embers. The monk drew the awl from his pocket. The god's eyes sparkled close to his face, and the artist felt the careless smile of Dionysus, and the lovely pose of the body. Even while digging out the sapphires, his admiring hand involuntarily spared the body of the marble tempter. Finally the deed was done. The blinded Dionysus stared horribly on the monk from his hollow orbits. Terror fairly seized Parphenas. It seemed that he was watched. He leapt down from the altar, ran to the rope-ladder, climbed, threw it down the other side of the wall, without taking time to fix it properly. This cost him a fall during the latter part of the descent. With crimson face, and clothes ragged and disordered, but griping the precious sapphires, he slunk furtively across the street, and ran to the monastery.