However steady the
candle-light, however bright the fire, however absorbing the book,
however secure one may feel by the fireside, the wind is always there;
and throughout these tranquil months Esther had always been most
unmistakably there.
In the morning Mark went to Mass and made his Communion. It was a
strangely calm morning; through the unstained windows of the clerestory
the sun sloped quivering ladders of golden light. He looked round with
half a hope that Esther was in the church; but she was absent, and
throughout the service that brief vision of her dark transit across the
cold green sky of yester eve kept recurring to his imagination, so that
for all the rich peace of this interior he was troubled in spirit, and
the intention to make this Mass upon his seventeenth birthday another
spiritual experience was frustrated. In fact, he was worshipping
mechanically, and it was only when Mass was over and he was kneeling to
make an act of gratitude for his Communion that he began to apprehend
how he was asking fresh favours from God without having moved a step
forward to deserve them.
"I think I'm too pleased with myself," he decided, "I think I'm
suffering from spiritual pride. I think. . . ."
He paused, wondering if it was blasphemous to have an intuition that God
was about to play some horrible trick on him.
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