Rain fell in a curtain of gleaming crystal rods between them. Seen through it, she appeared supernaturally tall, her garments streaming like black flames, her face a white-hot furnace, her eyes intolerable, merciless, grey lightnings, her voice a fiery sword that cleft the guilty to the soul.
The voice of Conscience was dumb in him. He knew no remorse, and made a jest of God. But his callous heart had been filled from the veins of generations of Irish Catholic peasants, and, in spite of himself, the blood in his veins ran cold with superstitious fear.
Yet, when no palpable answer came from that Heaven to which she cried, he rallied, remembering that, after all, she was a woman, and alone with him in the place. She had sunk back against the altar that was behind her. Her eyes were closed, her face a white mask of anguish; she looked as though about to swoon. Bough hailed the symptoms as favourable. Fainting was the prelude to caving in, with the women he knew. But when he stirred, her eyes were wide and preternaturally bright, and held him. He snarled:
"You'll not take the girl my message, then?"
She reared up her tall form, and laughed awfully.
"Did you dream I would defile her ears with it? Now that I know you, you will be wise to leave this place; for it is a spot where your sins may find you out!"
He jeered:
"That flash bounce doesn't go down with me. The trouble'll be at your end of the house, unless you listen to reason and stop giving off hot air. What's to hinder me making a clean breast to that swell toff she's wheedled into asking her to marry him? What's to hinder me from standing up before the whole mob, saying as I've repented what I done years back, and I've come to make an honest girl of her at last?"
The whirling waters of bitterness in her breast were rising, drowning her.... He realised her momentary weakness, and moved a step or two nearer, keeping well between the woman and the door.
"What's to hinder me, I say?"