Leon sadly but steadily quitted the room by the other door. Fúcar accompanied him as far as the Chinese room, where he left him, stretched like a lifeless body on a divan.
“Go” he said, “leave us, and put an end to this misery.” And he went back to his daughter.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE END.
Leon lay there a long time, unconscious of the flight of time. His scattered faculties slowly recovered their power of calmly contemplating the situation, though he found no peace. He rose to leave the house, and wandered vaguely from one room to another, seeking his way to the hall. When at length he reached it, he thought he heard strange voices, and stood still to listen; then, turning away, he descended a flight of back stairs that led to the basement floor, and tried to find his way out into the garden. After going in and out for some time in the endless and tortuous corridors of the servant’s premises, he saw a door which he opened.
All the blood in his body rushed in a cold tide to his heart and gave him a shock like a sudden fall, as he found himself in the chapel, lighted up by innumerable flambeaux. He took off his hat and gazed with open eyes. He was too much startled to do anything for some time but stand motionless at the door; he hardly seemed to breathe, and his bewildered mind was aware only of a mountain of light, for so it appeared to him: a mass of ruddy slender flames which stretched their quivering tongues to the very roof, rising from the melting wax that dropped in yellow streams. In the midst, as a base to this blazing pyramid, a funereal object filled, as it were the throne of honour; white drapery and two marble hands were all that could be distinguished.
It needed all his manly courage to carry him nearer. Before stepping forward he glanced round him. No one was there; he could not hear a sound, not even a living breath, was audible; the cold remains of a human being, robed in the garments of a saintly death, seemed guarded by silence. The statue of a pallid youth stood upon the altar; his eyes, painted like life, shone across the chapel, to watch all who entered, and say: “Beware! Touch her not!”
Leon advanced slowly, treading softly that he might not hear the sound of his own steps. Reverence, the sanctity of the spot, his agonising hesitancy between the wish to approach and the instinct to withdraw, caused him to go through half a dozen separate states of mind in the course of the twenty steps between the door and the altar: anxiety and curiosity, nay fear—or superstition. He had time to assure himself that it was awe that held him back, and the audacious curiosity of that very awe which urged him forward.
He saw her. There she lay, before him, on the ground, and at the very threshold, as it were, of the realm where her immortal soul might find complete repose. Her spirit, selfish rather than generous, had already passed, with a sigh perhaps of surprise and awe, into the unknown land where love is the only wisdom, and where good and evil are more exactly appreciated and understood.