Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/510

THE AMERICAN eyes on the screen behind the altar. That was the convent, the real convent, the place where she was. But he could see nothing; no light came through the crevices. He got up and approached the partition very gently, trying to look through. Behind it was darkness, with no sign even of despair. He went back to his place, and after that a priest and two altar-boys came in and began to say mass.

Newman watched their genuflexions and gyrations with a grim, still enmity; they seemed prompters and abettors of the wrong he had suffered; they were mouthing and droning out their triumph. The priest's long, dismal intonings acted upon his nerves and deepened his wrath; there was something defiant in his unintelligible drawl—as if it had been meant for his very own swindled self. Suddenly there arose from the depths of the chapel, from behind the inexorable grating, a sound that drew his attention from the altar—the sound of a strange, lugubrious chant uttered by women's voices. It began softly, but it presently grew louder, and as it increased it became more of a wail and a dirge. It was the chant of the Carmelite nuns, their only human utterance. It was their dirge over their buried affections and over the vanity of earthly desires. At first he was bewildered, almost stunned, by the monstrous manifestation; then, as he comprehended its meaning, he listened intently and his heart began to throb. He listened for Madame de Cintré's voice, and in the very heart of the tuneless harmony he imagined he made it out. We are obliged to believe that he was wrong, since she had obviously not yet had time to become a 480