But hurrying along the hall to her own room, Elizabeth whispered passionately in her heart: “I do not want to pray for him. Let him pray for himself. His saints pray for him too, and God loves him, and he does not need me. Does madame, then, suppose that he could ever care for me, or I for him? I want more than he can give—more—more! Show me my heart’s desire, O God, my God!”
In her excitement and in the darkness she laid her hand on the wrong door, and, opening it, found herself in an old gallery, at the end of which a light was glimmering. Scarcely heeding what she did, she moved toward it, and found that she was in the choir of the castle chapel. The door fell gently to behind her, but did not close, and Elizabeth was alone. Alone? The aisles were empty, the organ was still, the priest was gone; but before the sacred shrine the steady ray of the lamp told that He who filleth the heaven of heavens was dwelling in his earthly temple, and that unseen angels guarded all the place.
But of angels or men Elizabeth thought not. Silently, slowly she moved onward, her hands pressed upon her heart, whose passionate beating grew still as she came nearer to the Sacred Heart which alone could fully comfort, fully strengthen, fully understand. Slowly she moved, as one who knows that some great joy is coming surely, and who lengthens willingly the bliss of expectation.
And so she reached a narrow flight of steps, and made her way gently down, and knelt. Outside, in the clear night, a great wind rose, and rocked the castle-tower, but Elizabeth knew it not. She was conscious only of the intense stillness of that unseen Presence; of peace flooding her whole soul like a river; of the nearness of One who is strength and love and truth, infinite and eternal.
“Show me my heart’s desire, O God, my God!” she sighed.
God, my God! She lifted up her eyes, and there, above the shrine, beheld the great crucifix of Hohenstein, brought from the far-off East by a Crusader knight. She lifted up her eyes, and saw the haggard face full of unceasing prayer, the sunken cheeks, the pierced hands and feet, the bones, easy to number, in the worn and tortured body, the side with its deep wound where a spear had passed.
Yet, looking upward steadily, all her excitement gone, a sacred calm upon her inmost soul, Elizabeth knew that her prayer was answered, her lifelong hunger satisfied. God had given her her heart’s desire.
God, my God! No love but his could satisfy; and his could with an eternal content. To that Heart, pierced for her, broken for her, she could offer no less than her whole heart; and that she must offer, not by constraint, but simply because she loved him beyond all, above all, and knew that in him, and in him only, she was sure of an unfailing, an everlasting love.
Madame, seeking her in the early morning, found her room unoccupied, then noticed the gallery-door ajar, and, trembling, sought her there. Elizabeth had kept S. Agnes’ Eve indeed, but it was before the shrine of S. Agnes’ Spouse and Lord.
“My daughter,” the countess said, using the word for the first time, and with oh! how sad a tone—“what have you done this night, my daughter?”