Then the candles are, one by one, extinguished, until only a single taper is left burning on the altar--that is Jesus.

And in this darkness, symbolic of grief and mourning, an invisible choir sings the _Miserere_, Allegri's world-renowned composition, whose mystic notes bring so vividly before us that last scene on Golgotha,--the agony of the dying Saviour, the taunts of the lictors, the wailing of the holy women, the shrieks of the dead whose graves are opened, and who cry aloud for mercy, and finally the rending of the Temple curtain, and the chorus of angels in heaven.

All this affects even the most hardened of skeptics with a power that cannot be withstood.

For the time being the imagination is mistress of the reason.
As the crowd poured out of the chapel after the ceremony was over, Blanka shot a glance of scrutiny from beneath her veil at the young man by her side.

His face wore its wonted look of seriousness, the utter opposite of careless indifference, but at the same time wholly unlike the devout rapture of a believer.