After a
searching glance around him, the Etheling took up his station in the shelter
of a pillar.
"Little danger--or hope--is there than I can miss her," he told himself, "if
she is indeed here, as the page said. Yet of all the unlikely places to seek
her!" he smiled faintly as the figure in elfin green flitted through his mind.
As well look for a wood-nymph at confession--unless indeed, Elfgiva had taken
her there against her will-- But that was scarcely likely, he remembered
immediately afterwards, since an English-woman who had entered into a civil
marriage with a Dane would be little apt to frequent an English church.
"Doubtless she makes of it a meeting place with her newest lover," he
concluded. And the anger the thought gave him, and a sense of the helplessness
of his own position, was so great that he could not remain quiet under it but
was tortured into moving restlessly to and fro in the shadow.
Tender as the gloaming of a summer day was the shade in the great nave, with
the ever-burning candles to remind one of the eternal stars. Now their
quivering light called into life, for one brief moment, the golden dove that
hung above the altar; now it touched with dazzling brightness the precious
service on the holy table itself; again it was veiled by drifting incense as
by heaven's clouds. From the throats of the hidden choir, the last note
swelled rich and full, to roll out over the pillared aisles in a wave of
vibrant sound and pass away in a sigh of ineffable sweetness under the
rafters.
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