Page:Pierre and Luce.djvu/67

Rh but their breath of life, like the furtive contacts between quivering antennae) their souls pursued another dialogue more solemn and profound. The dreams in the colored windows, the shadows cast by the piers, the droning of the hymns mingled with their dream, evoked the sorrowful facts of life which they desired to forget and the consoling homesickness of the infinite. Although it was nearly eleven o'clock, a yellowish twilight brimmed the nave like the oil of a sacred cruet. From on high and from a great distance came strange gleams, the sombre purple of a window, a red pool on violet ones, indistinct figures encircled by their black settings. Against the high wall of night the blood-like gleam of light made a wound. . ..

Abruptly Luce remarked:

"Shall you have to be taken?"

He understood at once what she meant for in the silence his spirit too had pursued the same obscure trail.

"Yes," he said. "We mustn't talk of it."

"Only one thing. Tell me when?"