Jim was kneeling, far up toward the altar, his head in his hands. In all
the big church, which was bleak and bare in the cold afternoon light,
there was no one else. The red altar light flickered in its hanging
glass cup; a dozen lighted candles, in a great frame that held sockets
for five times as many, guttered and flared at the rail.
Minutes slipped by, and still the man knelt there motionless, and still
the woman sat watching him, her eyes brilliant and tender, her heart
flooded with a poignant happiness that carried before it all the
bitterness of the years. Julia felt born again. Like a person long deaf,
upon whose unsealed ears the roar of life bursts suddenly again, she
shrank away from the rush of emotion that shook her. It was
overpowering--dizzying--exhausting.
When Jim presently passed her she shrank into the shadow of her pillar,
but his face was sadder and more grave than Julia had ever seen it, and
he did not raise his eyes. She listened until his echoing footsteps died
away on the stairs; then the smile on her face faded, and she sank on
her knees and burst into tears.
But they were not tears of sorrow; instead, they seemed to Julia
infinitely soothing and refreshing.
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