Page:The Yellow Book - 13.djvu/71

Rh if ye would have done what He did." Moving swiftly to the wall, he turned the picture full on the gaze of the astounded brother. "Behold Love!"

It was a marvellous picture, fresh and living from the brain of its creator. Every speck of colour had been placed on with a hand sure of its power. Christ nailed to the cross; His hands and feet seemed to palpitate as if still imbued with some mysterious vestiges of life. The drops of blood which fell slowly down might have been blood indeed. But it was in the face — not in the vivid realism of the final scene of the tremendous drama — that the beauty lay. One doubted if it did not retain some strange element of life, some hidden vitality, rather felt than actually perceived, under the pallid flesh. As the light flickered over them, one would have said that the eyelids had not yet lost their power of contractability, as if at any moment one would find them wide open under the shadow of the brow; the mouth seemed still fresh with ghostly pleadings.

"Go, brother" said the Prior, "and meditate, and when you have learnt to do even such as this for your brethren, then turn the money-changers from the hallowed temple. I tell you" — and his face grew like one inspired — "I tell you this picture shall yet save a soul, unbind the ropes of sin, and lead a tortured one to heaven. Perhaps when we who stand here are gone," he added musingly. "Go, brother, and meditate."

When the picture was finished and its frame ready, the sculptured wood dazzling in its fresh gold and silver, on the day of St. Christopher, borne high amidst a procession of the monks, it was taken and hung up before the high altar. Rh