“You daren’t,” she said. “That would be the sin for which there’s no pardon. Don’t you understand?”
Marvellously Colin’s eyes glittered. It was as if they were faceted and caught a hundred points of light.
“And don’t you understand,” he said, “that that’s the very reason for my doing it? I pine for unpardonable sin!”
From outside there came the sudden stir of wind. It rattled at the window, and then blew with a great gust. He paused, holding up his hand and listening, and within him, swift as inspiration, the fire kindled.
“Just so it used to blow in the stone-pine in the garden at Capri,” he said. “It was there I heard it first. That’s no common wind. Violet! It’s a message: it’s a herald. The power is abroad and I hail it. Listen, isn’t that, even to your ears, something more than the common wind! You know it is. Fear it and loathe it, or worship it and adore it. But don’t deny it. Ah, the thrill of it! The splendid Pentecost.”
Never had she seen him like this, and whether it was that his exaltation communicated itself to her, or whether there was something present there inherent in that sonorous sudden gale, she felt her very spirit shudder and flicker like the blown flame of a candle.
He sprang to his feet, and took hold of her arm.
“Come with me now to the chapel,” he said. “We’ll get Father Douglas. Yes, of course you know he’s Father Douglas. Join with me, Violet, throw scruple and struggle away. Who has the best time after all, you with your agonizings and fears, or I, who don’t know what pain of soul or body means, whose every whim is gratified? Come and see: see if I haven’t chosen well, see if you don’t exult and glory in the power that I serve and that serves me! A midnight mass: you’ll see me as an acolyte—I make a damned handsome one—and the book Father Douglas will use is the very book, the missal of wondrous blasphemies, that old Colin speaks of in his memoirs. I’ve got tepid about worship, but with you there it will be new again to me. It’s in your blood, you’re a Stanier just as I am. It will boil up in your blood.”
She stood quite still, letting his hand still rest on her arm but sundering from herself the distraction of all the flood of desires and yearnings, of fears and of terrors, that had been streaming from her. She did not articulately pray, she did not implore and agonize for protection, she simply spread out her soul with an act of unreserved surrender to the spirit of God, and, in this turmoil within and without, let the peace that passed understanding seek her of its own accord and encompassingly hold her. Her only effort was to make no effort, to make herself utterly helpless....
The timeless moment passed, and she knew that the stress of some spiritual crisis was over. The wind outside, which seemed to have been raging round the very fortress of her soul, died down and ceased.