Presently the dimness cleared and she could see the steps again, the yellow carpet before the altar, the flowers upon the table and the burning lamp. But the priest had disappeared, and in his place a ray of sunlight smote obliquely through the dusk and made a golden patch upon the carpet.

She crossed herself, rose to her feet and moved towards the door. The servant followed her and the old men, the women and the children turned to smile at her and bless her with their eyes; she was their mistress, their symbol of beauty and of faith, so far removed from them and yet in the midst of them and all their misery, like a wild rose amongst the brambles.

At the church door the servant offered her holy water on the tips of her fingers, and then stooped to brush off the dust of the altar steps which still clung to her dress. As the girl raised herself again she saw the ashen face of Agnes turned towards the corner where the priest’s mother had knelt through all the service. Then she saw the mother sitting motionless on the ground, her head sunk forward on her breast, her shoulders leaning against the wall as though she had made a supreme effort to uphold it in a great collapse. Noticing the fixed gaze of Agnes and the servant, a woman also turned to look, then sprang quickly to the side of the priest’s mother, spoke to her in a whisper and raised her face in her hand.

The mother’s eyes were half closed, glassy, the pupils upturned; the rosary had dropped from her hand and her head fell sideways on to the shoulder of the woman who held her.

‘She is dead!’ shrieked the woman.

And instantly the whole congregation was on its feet and crowding to the bottom of the church.

Meanwhile Paul had gone back into the sacristy with Antiochus, who was carrying the book of the Gospel. He was trembling with cold and with relief; he actually felt as though he had just escaped from a shipwreck, and he wanted to energize and walk about to warm himself and convince himself that it had all been a bad dream.

Then a confused murmur of voices was heard in the church, at first low, then growing quickly louder and louder. Antiochus put his head out of the sacristy door and saw all the people collected together at the bottom of the nave, as though there were some obstruction at the entrance, but an old man was already hastening up the chancel steps and making mysterious signs.

‘His mother is taken ill,’ he said.

Paul, still robed in his alb, was down there at one bound and threw himself on his knees that he might look more closely into his mother’s face as she lay stretched on the ground, with her head in a woman’s lap and hemmed in by the pressing crowd.

‘Mother, mother!’

The face was still and rigid, the eyes half closed, the teeth clenched in the effort not to cry aloud.