I was overwhelmed. No trace of scepticism or unbelief remained in me.
“Is he here now?” I asked, in the same mystic tone as the monk.
He shook his head. “He left here just before the cholera broke out in Constantinople.”
“But the cholera is over now.”
“Yes, I am expecting him back at any minute.”
“How do you hear him come and go?” I asked, unwonted fear of the supernatural conquering me.
“You will hear him, too, if he returns before you go. Everything in the church moves and shakes when he leaves it or re-enters it.”
“But if he should not come back while I am here, how can I be sold to him?”
“That does not matter,” Father Arsenius reassured me. “He will know of it when he comes back—though I think that sometimes when people are not cured, it is because he is far away, and his grace does not reach them.” He bowed his head. “I have given my heart to him, and he has purified it. I am his slave, and shall be so for life.”
“I will be his slave, too,” I put in eagerly. Had I been asked at that moment to become a nun, I should have done so gladly, such was the influence Father Arsenius had over me.