The deep-seated travail of his grief abruptly reached the paroxysm.

With long strides he crossed the garden and reentered the Mission church itself, plunging into the coolness of its atmosphere as into a bath.
What he searched for he did not know, or, rather, did not define.

He knew only that he was suffering, that a longing for Angele, for some object around which his great love could enfold itself, was tearing at his heart with iron teeth.

He was ready to be deluded; craved the hallucination; begged pitifully for the illusion; anything rather than the empty, tenantless night, the voiceless silence, the vast loneliness of the overspanning arc of the heavens.
Before the chancel rail of the altar, under the sanctuary lamp, Vanamee sank upon his knees, his arms folded upon the rail, his head bowed down upon them.

He prayed, with what words he could not say for what he did not understand--for help, merely, for relief, for an Answer to his cry.
It was upon that, at length, that his disordered mind concentrated itself, an Answer--he demanded, he implored an Answer.