They stood still and close together, listening. There was no sound from outside—not a call for the Padre, not a reassuring shout that Billy had succeeded in finding him.
Angela groped with her hand, and, by accident, touched Nick's. To save his soul he could not have resisted pressing the small cold fingers! Wonderful! She did not snatch them away! Often they had shaken hands, or Nick had taken hers to help her in or out of the motor-car; but there had been nothing like this. He felt the thrill of the touch go through him as though electric wires flashed a message to his heart. He was afraid of himself—afraid he should kiss her hand, or stammer out "I love you!" And that would be fatal, for she would never trust herself to him again. Besides, it would not be fair. She was like a child asking his protection, here in the dark, and he must treat her as a man treats a child who has come to him because it is afraid. But he could not think of her as a child. He thought of the night in New York when she had knocked on his door, and called to him, a stranger, for help. He thought how he had seen her, drowned in the waves of her hair, like the angel of his dreams.
"Do you hear that?" she whispered, letting him keep her hand, even clasping his with her fingers. "There's something alive in this church, something besides ourselves."
Nick felt giddy. It was all he could do to keep himself from catching her in his arms, no matter what might be the consequences, no matter how she might hate him a moment afterward. But he resisted, and the strain of temptation passed.
"A bird has got in, perhaps," he said.
"You—you—don't think it could be the Padre himself ill, or—or——"
Nick understood her hesitation and fear.
"No," he soothed her. "We'd have seen any but some small thing. I've got two or three matches in my box, I guess. We'll have a look around." This was supreme self-sacrifice on his part, for to find matches and "look around" meant letting Angela's hand go. To let it go was tempting Providence, since almost certainly she would never, of her own accord, slip it into his again.
"Yes, do let us," she said, and drew the hand away. Nick supposed she had hardly been conscious that he had held her fingers in his, and even pressed them. But this was not the fact. True, Angela had mechanically groped for a protecting touch. Nevertheless, she was aware of Nick's hand on hers, and glad of it, with a gladness made up of several conflicting feelings: such as surprise, some slight shame, and defiance of that shame. She was afraid of the rustling in the dark, which might mean a lurking thief, a man half murdered, or one of a dozen things each more unpleasant than the other. Yet she half liked being afraid in the dark, with Nick Hilliard to reassure her, though she would have hated it with Billy. No unknown horror she could conjure up would have made her want to touch Billy. She was almost sorry when Nick found his matches and together they began moving about the church, she keeping a little behind.
The last match but one lit up something white that stirred beside the altar; and as the flame died down, leaving only a red glowing point, a pair of eyes like two points of fire stared up from the floor.