Gortre could not be called a superstitious man. The really religious temperament, which, while not rejecting the aids of surface and symbol, has seen far below them, rarely is "superstitious" as the word has come to be understood.
The familiar touch, the pleasant sensation of the limp, rough leather on his finger-balls gave him a feeling of security. But that very fact seemed to remind him that some danger, some subtle mental danger, was near. Was this Bible sent to him? he wondered. Were his eyes and hands directed to it by the vibrating, invisible presences which he felt were near him? Who could say?
But he took the book in his right hand, breathed a prayer for help and guidance—if it might so be that God, who watched him, would speak a message of help—and opened it at random.
He was about to make a trial of that old mediæval practice of "searching"—that harmless trial of faith which a modern hard-headed cleric has analysed so cleverly, so completely, and so entirely unsatisfactorily.
He opened the book, with his eyes fixed in front of him, and then let them drop towards it. For a moment the small type was all blurred and indistinct, and then one text seemed to leap out at him.
It was this—
"TAKE YE HEED, WATCH AND PRAY: FOR YE KNOW NOT WHEN THE TIME IS."
This, then, was his message! He was to watch, to pray, for the time was at hand when—
The curtain slid aside, and Schuabe entered with a tray. He had changed his morning coat for a long dressing-gown of camel's-hair, and wore scarlet leather slippers.
Basil slipped the Bible back into its place and turned to face him.