From side to side across the entrance to the choir ran the rood-screen, a vast erection of brown oak and black iron, surmounted by a high loft, from which glimmered down sheaves of silvered organ pipes, and, higher yet, in deep shadow, he could make out three gigantic figures, of which the center one was nailed to a cross.  Beyond this began the stalls—­dark and majestic, broken by carving—­jutting heads of kings and priests leaning forward as if to breathe in the magnetism of that immense living silence generated by forty men at their prayers.  At the further end there shone out faintly the glory of the High Altar, almost luminous, it seemed, in the light of the single red spark that hung before it.  Frank could discern presently the gilded figures that stood among the candlesticks behind, the throne and crucifix, the mysterious veiling curtains of the Tabernacle....  Finally, in the midst of the choir, stood a tall erection which he could not understand.

* * * * *

An extraordinary peace seemed to descend and envelop him as he looked—­a kind of crown and climax of various interior experiences that were falling on him now—­for the last few weeks. (It is useless trying to put it into words.  I shall hope to do my best presently by quoting Frank himself.) There was a sense of home-coming; there was a sense of astonishing sanity; there was a sense of an enormous objective peace, meeting and ratifying that interior peace which was beginning to be his.  It appeared to him, somehow, as if for the first time he experienced without him that which up to now he had chiefly found within.  Certainly there had been moments of this before—­not merely emotional, you understand—­when heart and head lay still from their striving, and the will reposed in Another Will.  But this was the climax:  it summed up all that he had learned in the last few months; it soothed the last scars away, it explained and answered—­and, above all, correlated—­his experiences.  No doubt it was the physical, as well as the spiritual, atmosphere of this place, the quiet corridors, the warmth and the plainness and the solidity, even the august grace of the refectory—­all these helped and had part in the sensation.  Yet, if it is possible for you to believe it, these were no more than the vessels from which the heavenly fluid streamed; vessels, rather, that contained a little of that abundance that surged up here as in a fountain....

Frank started a little at a voice in his ear.

“When’s it going to begin?” whispered the Major in a hoarse, apprehensive voice.

(V)

A figure detached itself presently from the dark mass of the stalls and came down to where they were sitting.  Frank perceived it was Father Hildebrand.

“We’re singing Mattins of the Dead, presently,” he said in a low voice.  “It’s All Souls’ Eve.  Will you stay, or shall I take you to your room?”