No woman's voice was ever sweet to me after hers, the touch of
no woman's hand ever made my heart beat one moment quicker for pleasure or
for pain, since I pressed hers for the last time on that fateful evening
twenty years ago. Even so--!...
When the service was over and the people had streamed out and dispersed, I
went back for the last time into the quiet church. A white robed server
was extinguishing the last candle on the altar; only the one red light
perpetually vigilant before the sanctuary, made more visible the deep
shadows everywhere.
Lorimer was still kneeling with bowed head in his place. Presently he rose
and came towards me. 'She was there--Delphine--you heard her. Ah, Dion, she
loves you, she always loves you, you are avenged.'
I gather that for years he has spent hours daily in this church, to be near
her, and hear her voice, the magnificent voice rising above all the other
voices in the chants of her religion. But he will never see her, for is she
not of the Dames Rouges! And I remember now all the stories of the Order,
of its strictness, its austerity, its perfect isolation. And chiefly, I
remember how they say that only twice after one of these nuns has taken her
vows is she seen of any one except those of her community; once, when she
enters the Order, the door of the convent is thrown back and she is seen
for a single moment in the scarlet habit of the Order, by the world, by all
who care to gaze; and once more, at the last, when clad in the same coarse
red garb, they bear her out quietly, in her coffin, into the church.
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