y Father, would have fitted
him for the ascetic, yet impassioned, life of an ardent and devoted
monk. To defend this consecrated building against outrage he would,
without hesitation, have given his last drop of blood. And now he was to
perform in it an act against which his whole nature revolted; he was
to join indissolubly the lives of these two strangers who had come to
Beni-Mora--Domini Enfilden and Boris Androvsky. He was to put on the
surplice and white stole, to say the solemn and irreparable "Ego Jungo,"
to sprinkle the ring with holy water and bless it.

As he sat there alone, listening to the howling of the storm outside, he
went mentally through the coming ceremony. He thought of the wonderful
grace and beauty of the prayers of benediction, and it seemed to him
that to pronounce them with his lips, while his nature revolted against
his own utterance, was to perform a shameful act, was to offer an insult
to this little church he loved.

Yet how could he help performing this act? He knew that he would do it.
Within a few minutes he would be standing before the altar, he would be
looking into the faces of this man and woman whose love he was called
upon to consecrate. He would consecrate it, and they would go out from
him into the desert man and wife. They would be lost to his sight in the
town.

His eye fell upon a silver crucifix that was hanging upon the wall in
front of him. He was not a very imaginative man, not a man given to
fancies, a dreamer of dreams more real to him than life, or a seer of
visions. But to-day he was stirred, and perhaps the unwonted turmoil of
his mind acted subtly upon his nervous system. Afterward he felt certain
that it must have been so, for in no other way could he account for a
fantasy that beset him at this moment.

As he looked at the crucifix there came against the church a more
furious beating of the wind, and it seemed to him that the Christ upon
the crucifix shuddered.

He saw it shudder. He started, leaned across the table and stared at the
crucifix with eyes that were full of an amazement that was mingled with
horror. Then he got up, crossed the room and touched the crucifix with
his finger. As he did so, the acolyte, whose duty it was to help him
to robe, knocked at the sacristy door. The sharp noise recalled him to
himself. He knew that for the first time in his life he had been the
slave of an optical delusion. He knew it, and yet he could not banish
the feeling