another light at this point.  The lady had noticed that some one was coming behind her and turned her head to look back.  The delicate, dark profile stood out clearly.  Unorna held her breath, walking swiftly forward.  But in a moment the lady went on, and entered the chapel-like room from which a great balconied window looked down into the church above the choir.  As Unorna went in, she saw her kneeling upon one of the stools, her hands folded, her head inclined, her eyes closed, a black veil loosely thrown over her still blacker hair and falling down upon her shoulder without hiding her face.

Unorna sank upon her knees, compressing her lips to restrain the incoherent exclamation that almost broke from them in spite of her, clasping her hands desperately, so that the faint blue veins stood out upon the marble surface.

Below, hundreds of candles blazed upon the altar in the choir and sent their full yellow radiance up to the faces of the two women, as they knelt there almost side by side, both young, both beautiful, but utterly unlike.  In a single glance Unorna had understood that it was true.  An arm’s length separated her from the rival whose very existence made her own happiness an utter impossibility.  With unchanging, unwilling gaze she examined every detail of that beauty which the Wanderer had so loved, that even when forgotten there was no sight in his eyes for other women.

It was indeed such a face as a man would find it hard to forget.  Unorna, seeing the reflection of it in the Wanderer’s mind, had fancied it otherwise, though she could not but recognise the reality from the impression she had received.  She had imagined it more ethereal, more faint, more sexless, more angelic, as she had seen it in her thoughts.  Divine it was, but womanly beyond Unorna’s own.  Dark, delicately aquiline, tall and noble, the purity it expressed was of earth and not of heaven.  It was not transparent, for there was life in every feature; it was sad indeed almost beyond human sadness, but it was sad with the mortal sorrows of this world, not with the unfathomable melancholy of the suffering saint.  The lips were human, womanly, pure and tender, but not formed for speech of prayer alone.  The drooping lids, not drawn, but darkened with faint, uneven shadows by the flow of many tears, were slowly lifted now and again, disclosing a vision of black eyes not meant for endless weeping, nor made so deep and warm only to strain their sight towards heaven above, forgetting earth below.  Unorna knew that those same eyes could gleam, and flash, and blaze, with love and hate and anger, that under the rich, pale skin, the blood could rise and ebb with the changing tide of the heart, that the warm lips could part with passion and, moving, form words of love.  She saw pride in the wide sensitive nostrils, strength in the even brow, and queenly dignity in the perfect poise of the head upon the slender throat.  And the clasped hands were womanly, too, neither full and white and heavy like those of a marble statue, as Unorna’s were, nor thin and over-sensitive like those of holy women in old pictures, but real and living, delicate in outline, but not without nervous strength, hands that might linger in another’s, not wholly passive, but all responsive to the thrill of a loving touch.