In a great mental upheaval, to be able to decide, even on a point of secondary importance, is helpful. It is like a plank to the shipwrecked.
Such to her was Iona’s resolution to go to the Basilica and watch all night. Christ had said “Come!” and she would go as near to him as she knew how. The sense of blind obedience was restful. She looked across the town, and a certain peacefulness seemed to hover over the white building beyond the river. She thought herself like that river, flowing in silent shadow now after a wild rush from height to depth, and through dark and stormy ways.
There was no assembly that evening, and the avenue and square were unlighted. But the roof-terraces were populous, and a murmur of voices and of music came from them. They called to each other across the narrow streets; and when some one sang to mandolin or guitar in one terrace, the near ones hushed themselves to listen. It seemed to Iona like something that she had heard of long before, it was so far away, and had so lost its spirit and color.
There are times when to hear laughter gives one a feeling of terror such as might be felt if it came from a train of cars about to roll down a precipice. When Dante came up from the Inferno, careless laughter must have affected him so.
As Iona entered the Basilica, locking the door behind her, the sweet, true word of an English writer recurred to her: “Solitude is the antechamber to the presence of God.”
She knelt before the Throne a moment; then, seating herself on the cushioned step, waited for some plan of life to suggest itself to her as possible and tolerable.
“It must be outside the mountains,” she began, then checked herself. “It shall be where God wills.”
But, oh, the torment of it! The utter collapse of all spirit and elasticity!
The shadows of the portal came up to fall before the light of the tribune, and the light went down to meet the shadows. Darker slanting shadows of columns crossed the dim side aisles. There were panels of deep, rich color between, growing brighter toward the tribune. On the balustrades were thirty-three lamps, one for each year of the King’s life. They climbed in a narrowing flame-shape with the Throne and the tiara. In the jewels a sleeping rainbow stirred.
Iona rose and wandered about the church. What more could she say, or do? Was she to go out as blind and unconsoled as she had entered? The silence was terrible. It occurred to her that having had no conscious and pressing need of God, she had gone on fancying herself in communion with him when there had been no living communion.