I offered Iolanthe my arm. The folding doors were pulled open.
Faces! Faces! Endless masses of faces! As if glued to one another. And all of them leered at me as if to say:
"Hanckel, you are making an ass of yourself."
An avenue formed itself between them, and we walked down the avenue while I kept thinking in the deathlike silence, "Strange that nobody bursts out laughing."
So we reached the altar, which the old man had constructed with awful skill of a large packing box covered with red bunting. And quite an exhibition of flowers and candles on it, with a crucifix in the middle, as at a funeral.
The pastor was standing in front of us. He put on his solemn ministerial air and stroked back the wide sleeves of his vestment like a sleight-of-hand man about to begin his tricks.
First a hymn--five stanzas--then the sermon.
I have not the slightest idea what the pastor said, for suddenly a perverse thought entered my brain and became a fixed idea not to be shaken off.
She will say, "No!"
And the nearer we drew to the decisive moment the more the anguish of that thought throttled me. Finally I had not the least doubt in the world that she would say "No."