She snatched a cloak, sped through halls, down stairs, through more halls and a back door, out into the moonlit yard. There was only a low iron fence to jump, and she was under the curve of the apse. A door stood half open in the corner where it joined the main building, and within was a swing-door which yielded noiselessly. It was quite dark there under the gallery, but a few gas-lights flickered in the chancel and shone on lower ranges of gilded organ-pipes, banked away beyond in a kind of transept, and on a choir screen that hid the organist. A few dusky figures could be made out sitting in pews here and there in the nave. Helen crept into a seat next a stone pillar that felt rugged and cool, and was pushed forward partly into the pew. The building of the temple had ceased, its visionary masonry, carvings, and rose window vanished at a touch withdrawn. The organ was murmuring down among the old foundations of the world, communing with the beginnings of time, meditating to rise out of the deep with a new creation. Otherwise the church was so still that the air seemed heavy with the stillness. A multitude of fleeting, flickering sounds broke out, like a burst of fireworks, the air full of shooting-stars, blown bubbles, and tinsel. There was a piping and dancing in the sunlight on delicate meadow grass, by pipers and dancers who could not conceivably grow old. Then a voice spoke suddenly among them. One could not tell where it came from or what it said. It was cold, sombre, indifferent. But it ceased and the dancing went on, more bacchanal now. There were perfumes, garlands on hot foreheads, shrieking and whirring of stringed instruments, high laughter, and swinging in circles. The loud, cold voice spoke again, and left no echoes or after-murmurs. Something more quiet followed, as if the memory of fear could not be quite put away, or remained in the form of an altered mood. People walked hand-in-hand. There was warm twilight and the ripple of a flowing river. After all, life was sweeter for seriousness, love best in the stillness and twilight. The cold, insistent voice rose, a stone pillar of sound, and all these things became complaining ghosts before its weightier reality. So that at length and in the end it remained alone, except for the mutter in the pit below, and there was no triumph in its victory, but it continued cold, sombre, indifferent, monotonous, heavy. Some one beyond the pillar sighed in the darkness, and a hand fell on Helen's hand which gripped the edge of the seat. Helen started and whispered, "Oh, that was hateful!" "I beg your pardon." "He plays like anything, but--" She came out of her absorption to know that she had been whispering her thoughts into the darkness, and that the darkness had given forth an apology. A shadow the other side of the little stone pillar seemed to be leaning forward now and looking at her. A dress rustled. "The music was sad, was it not?" and Helen whispered again: