The Bars of Iron

by Ethel M. Dell

Avery got up slowly. Her own face was severe in the candlelight, but before she could speak he went lightly on.

"Would you like me to play you something before we go? Or are you too tired to blow? It's rather a shame to suggest it. But it's such a grand opportunity."

Avery turned at once to the organ with a feeling of relief. As usual she found it very hard to rebuke him as he deserved.

"Yes, I will blow for you," she said. "But it must be something short, for we ought to be going."

She sat down and began to blow.

Piers took his place at once at the organ. It was characteristic of him that he never paused for inspiration. His fingers moved over the keys as it were by instinct, and in a few moments Avery forgot that she was tired and dispirited with the bearing of many burdens, forgot all the problems and difficulties of life, forgot even her charges at the Vicarage and the waiting schoolroom tea, and sat wrapt as it were in a golden mist of delight, watching the slow spreading of a dawn such as she had never seen even in her dreams. What he played she knew not, and yet the music was not wholly unfamiliar to her. It waked within her soul harmonies that vibrated in throbbing response. He spoke to her in a language that she knew. And as the magic moments passed, the wonderful dawn so grew and deepened that it seemed to her that all pain, all sorrow, had fallen utterly away, and she stood on the threshold of a new world.

Wider and wider spread the glory. There came to her an overwhelming sense of greatness about to be revealed. She became strung to a pitch of expectancy that was almost anguish, while the music swelled and swelled like the distant coming of a vast procession as yet unseen. She stood as it were on a mountain-top before the closed gates of heaven, waiting for the moment of revelation.

It came. Just when she felt that she could bear no more, just when the wild beating of her heart seemed as if it would choke her, the music changed, became suddenly all-conquering, a paean of triumph, and the gates swung back before her eager eyes.

In spirit she entered the Holy Place, and the same hand that had admitted her lifted for her the last great Veil. For one moment of unutterable rapture such as no poor palpitating mortal body could endure for long, the vision was her own. She saw Heaven opened….

And then the Veil descended, and the Gates closed. She came down from the mountain-top, leaving the golden dawn very far behind her. She opened her eyes in darkness and silence.