'Ora pro nobis, Sancta Dei Genetrix!'
and the voices in the gallery answered:
'Ut digni efficiamur promissionibus Christi.'
There was one voice which rose above all the others, a voice of marvellous
sweetness and power, which from the first moment had caused me a curious
thrill. And presently Lorimer bent down and whispered to me: 'So near,' he
murmured, 'and yet so far away--so near, and yet never quite close!'
But before he had spoken I had read in his rigid face, in his eyes fixed
with such a passion of regret on the screen, why we were there--whose voice
it was we had listened to.
I rose and went out of the church quietly and hastily; I felt that to stay
there one moment longer would be suffocation.... Poor woman! so this is how
she sought consolation, in religion! Well, there are different ways for
different persons--and for me--what is there left for me? Oh, many things,
no doubt, many things. Still, for once and for the last time, let me set
myself down as a dreary fraud. I never forgot her, not for one hour or day,
not even when it seemed to me that I had forgotten her most, not even when
I married. No woman ever represented to me the same idea as Madame de
Savaresse.
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