Paula did not turn her head, and De Stancy strolled slowly after her down the Rue du College.

The day happened to be one of the church festivals, and people were a second time flocking into the lofty monument of Catholicism at its meridian.

Paula vanished into the porch with the rest; and, almost catching the wicket as it flew back from her hand, he too entered the high-shouldered edifice--an edifice doomed to labour under the melancholy misfortune of seeming only half as vast as it really is, and as truly as whimsically described by Heine as a monument built with the strength of Titans, and decorated with the patience of dwarfs.
De Stancy walked up the nave, so close beside her as to touch her dress; but she would not recognize his presence; the darkness that evening had thrown over the interior, which was scarcely broken by the few candles dotted about, being a sufficient excuse if she required one.
'Miss Power,' De Stancy said at last, 'I am coming to the service with you.' She received the intelligence without surprise, and he knew she had been conscious of him all the way.
Paula went no further than the middle of the nave, where there was hardly a soul, and took a chair beside a solitary rushlight which looked amid the vague gloom of the inaccessible architecture like a lighthouse at the foot of tall cliffs.
He put his hand on the next chair, saying, 'Do you object ?' 'Not at all,' she replied; and he sat down.
'Suppose we go into the choir,' said De Stancy presently.

'Nobody sits out here in the shadows.' 'This is sufficiently near, and we have a candle,' Paula murmured.
Before another minute had passed the candle flame began to drown in its own grease, slowly dwindled, and went out.
'I suppose that means I am to go into the choir in spite of myself.
Heaven is on your side,' said Paula.

And rising they left their now totally dark corner, and joined the noiseless shadowy figures who in twos and threes kept passing up the nave.
Within the choir there was a blaze of light, partly from the altar, and more particularly from the image of the saint whom they had assembled to honour, which stood, surrounded by candles and a thicket of flowering plants, some way in advance of the foot-pace.