He looked beyond them all, beyond the Chapel, beyond the world. He gave one cry:
"My God, Thou art come." Some other words followed but were caught up and muffled. He fell forward, collapsing in a heap against the desk. His head struck the wood and then he lay there perfectly still.
Maggie could only dimly gather what happened after the sound of that fall. There seemed to her to be a long and terrible silence during which the clock continued remorselessly to strike. The Chapel appeared to be a place of shadows as though the gas had suddenly died to dim haloes; she was conscious that people moved about her, that Aunt Anne had left them, and that Aunt Elizabeth was saying to her again and again: "How terrible! How terrible! How terrible!"
Then as though it were some other person, Maggie found herself very calmly speaking to Aunt Elizabeth.
"Are we to wait for Aunt Anne?" she whispered.
"Anne said we were to go home."
"Then let's go," whispered Maggie.
They went to the door, pushing, it seemed, through shadows who whispered and forms that vanished as soon as one looked at them.
Out in the open air Maggie was aware that she was trembling from head to foot, but a determined idea that she must get Aunt Elizabeth home at once drove her like a goad. Very strange it was out here, the air ringing with the clamour of bells. The noise seemed deafening, whistles blowing from the river, guns firing and this swinging network of bells echoing through the fog. Figures, too, ran with lights, men singing, women laughing, all mysteriously in the tangled darkness.
They were joined at once by Aunt Anne, who said: