Her heart swelled anew with rage and grief as the hymn rose and fell around her, like a supplication rising from out of some abyss, imploring help and justice, and she heard the voice of God, dark and stern, bidding her drive His unworthy servant out of His temple.

She grew pale as death and broke into a cold sweat; her knees shook against the seat, but she bowed no more and with head erect she watched the movements of the priest at the altar. And it was as though some evil breath went out from her to him, paralysing him, enveloping him in the same icy grip that held her fast.

And he felt that mortal breath that emanated from her will, and, just as on bitter winter mornings, his fingers were frozen and uncontrollable shivers ran down his spine. When he turned to give the benediction he saw Agnes gazing at him. Their eyes met as in a flash, and like a drowning man he remembered in that instant all the joy of his life, joy sprung wholly and solely from love of her, from the first look of her eyes, the first kiss of her lips.

Then he saw her rise from her seat, book in hand.

‘Oh God, Thy will be done,’ he stammered, kneeling – and he seemed to be actually in the Garden of Olives, watching the shadow of an inexorable fate.

He prayed aloud and waited, and midst the confused sound of the people’s prayers he thought he could distinguish Agnes’s step as she moved toward the altar.

‘She is coming – she has left her seat, she is between her seat and the altar. She is coming … she is here – every one is staring at her. She is at my side!’

The obsession was so strong that the words failed on his lips. He saw Antiochus, who had already begun to extinguish the candles, suddenly turn and look round, and he knew for certain that she was there, close to him, on the chancel steps.

He rose to his feet, the roof seemed to fall down upon his head and fracture it; his knees scarcely upheld him, but with a sudden effort he managed to get up to the altar again and take the pyx. And as he turned to enter the sacristy he saw that Agnes had advanced from her seat to the railing and was about to mount the steps.

‘Oh, Lord, why not let me die?’ and he bowed his head over the pyx as though baring his neck to the sword that was about to strike it. But as he entered the sacristy door he looked again and perceived Agnes bowed at the altar railing as she knelt on the lowest step.

She had stumbled at the lowest step outside the railing, and as though a wall had suddenly risen up before her, she had dropped on her knees. A thick mist dimmed her sight and she could go no farther.