ear the high altar (or where the high altar had been before Protestant
fury had torn it down), came a whisper like the awakening of the
cathedral's soul; a long-drawn note which grew stronger and fuller,
filling the whole building with a pulse of sound.

Wilhelmine paused, then, turning silently to one of the oaken pews, sat
down. A wondrous melody crept through the air, strong, noble,
uncomplicated; then followed chords growing each moment more the
expression of a soul on fire. They rose stronger, they swelled and strove
and implored, they wailed with the passion of finite hearts that yearn
infinitely; then suddenly sank back into the solemn major key whence they
started. And it was as the renunciation of some terrible striving, as
though the organ chanted the litany of some perfect calm reached through
an agony of endeavour and suffering. Wilhelmine's eyes were wet, while
she leaned her head against the back of the oaken pew. To her music was
the only form of prayer, and it never failed to move her to a vague
aspiration, she herself knew hardly what. Her dreams of the world faded,
and she was only cognisant of the dim church and the inspired
improvisation of her beloved Monsieur Gabriel. This was his answer to her
as yet unasked question. She had come to him for guidance, to beg his
counsel concerning her brother's letter, and he had told her in his music
all that he knew of the world. He had shown her the cruel agony of the
worldly life, the unrest, the bootless seeking, the satiety of realised
ambition, and the calmness, the peace of the renunciation of these
things.

The organ was silent for a moment, and then through the stillness of the
shadowy aisle floated the first notes of an 'Ave Maria,' which Wilhelmine
knew well and had often sung when no disturbing element of disapproving
Protestant burgherdom was near. Instinctively she came in at the
appointed bar for the voice's commencement. 'Ave Maria gratia plena,' she
sang, and her powerful notes echoed through the cathedral with all the
sombre glory which lay in her great contralto voice. The player at the
organ immediately softened his music to a mere accompanying whisper,
which yet supported the voice, greeting it with the newly awakened soul
of the organ. 'Ora pro nobis, peccatoribus,' she sang, and surely the
Mother of God must have listened to so wonderful a tone prayer? 'Nunc et
in hora mortis nostrae, Amen.' And the organ wandered on repeating the
'Amen' a