[The Marble Faun Volume II. by Nathaniel Hawthorne]@TWC D-Link bookThe Marble Faun Volume II. CHAPTER XXXIX 1/12
THE WORLD'S CATHEDRAL Still gliding onward, Hilda now looked up into the dome, where the sunshine came through the western windows, and threw across long shafts of light.
They rested upon the mosaic figures of two evangelists above the cornice.
These great beams of radiance, traversing what seemed the empty space, were made visible in misty glory, by the holy cloud of incense, else unseen, which had risen into the middle dome.
It was to Hilda as if she beheld the worship of the priest and people ascending heavenward, purified from its alloy of earth, and acquiring celestial substance in the golden atmosphere to which it aspired, She wondered if angels did not sometimes hover within the dome, and show themselves, in brief glimpses, floating amid the sunshine and the glorified vapor, to those who devoutly worshipped on the pavement. She had now come into the southern transept.
Around this portion of the church are ranged a number of confessionals.
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