The storm had completely passed now; the divine stillness of the mountain solitudes had returned; sound there was none, save the distant roar of the vexed and chafing sea, whence the indigo stain had fled, leaving it darkly and deeply blue as before, with tumbling ridges of white foam, touched with gold. For now the setting sun flashed out from broken cloud, throwing rose-gold radiance across the western bay, striking up wooded hill-spurs, bringing towers and village walls into sudden glow, and flushing the wet, bare mountain peaks one after another with crimson fire. Even Agatha's sad heart was quickened as she lifted her eyes to that glorious spectacle and saw the rose flame kindle peak after peak in the vast sweep of engirdling mountains with vivid changing splendour. It was as if the fire of Heaven had visibly descended upon that temple of many altars, in token of some hidden, accepted sacrifice, some offered incense found worthy and well-pleasing. The splendour glowed and deepened till every barren, craggy peak, veined with shadow and streaked with fresh snow, was a crimson flame on a violet sky; the deep silence was a mystic, triumphant psalm of praise to which the solemn roar of the troubled sea was a humbler antiphon, a more earthly response. "The Lord sitteth above the water-flood--The Lord is King be the people never so impatient," the far-off surges sang, and the impatience died from her troubled heart; the poignancy of her despair abated. The celestial fire, changing and quivering as with life-breath, kindled upon ridge after ridge; every village tower, every cottage and hut glowed in the jewel-flame; the white convent walls gleamed in pale claret and lambent gold from between dark cypress and eucalyptus boughs; and at the top of the steps, its welcoming arms flung wide to the world, the great wooden cross, one blaze of rose-gold fire, proclaimed the one hope in all the wide waste tumult of human life, the one eternal sacrifice, the Calvary that is the only road to any Paradise. Ave Crux Spes Unica, she read once more on the glowing centre of the cross. Only a few hours since, she had prayed and implored, even knelt to, the Jewish usurer near that very cross for Ivor--and all to no purpose. It had been very bitter, to humble herself to that man, to lay bare to his contemptuous and cruel gaze that secret heart-sanctuary a woman veils jealously even from herself. He had said things that brought the crimson to her face and cut her to the very quivering heart; he had laughed and prophesied the futility of what she implored, even though he had melted and given way with respect, almost tenderness, at last. What if her own sacrifice, poor and petty, though so much to her, were vain, could that symbolized in the plain wood steeped in glorious rose-lustre above her ever fail?