The airy mockery in her tone jarred on me.
“Go nearer,” she continued, “look at it closer. It is worth studying, and is of excellent workmanship. Everything in these places should be and is of the best.”
I went nearer as she bade me. It was indeed of exquisite workmanship.
“I had not thought to meet with that in Hell,” I said at length.
“I do not think you could get it better done in Heaven,” she observed, and laughed and turned away.
I too turned from it, with a horrible repugnance growing in me mixed with extreme pain. I saw this figure for the first time in an unexpected place, and something within me struggled for expression, yet found none. Beneath the Crucifix, which was exceeding highly placed, broad flights of steps led up to a crimson altar, and above the altar was a handsome doorway of gold, which reached just so high as the Saviour’s feet.
I noticed with some curiosity and surprise that she was ascending the steps before us. I followed with cold yet burning interest, for in this place white heat is only quenched with ice, and ice melted with white heat alone.
But when we reached the upper step the altar was invisible. It had vanished, and the door alone remained before us. It opened, as all things opened here, silent and swiftly.
She had been watching, and espied my look of evident astonishment, which amused her.
“The lights are thrown on in such a manner that when you are below you imagine you see an arrangement something like a table,” she said. “But that would be a very inconvenient, and at the same time undignified, way of approaching the doorway, and I should have thought your own common sense would tell you it was nothing but a sham—a myth rather, I might say.”