Some sudden emotion seemed to sweep over her. She stood motionless with clasped hands, looking at her crucifix. There was a strange sadness upon her face, a tragic sanctity, as on the face of a woman who renounces the world, and more. For a long while she was silent, as though suffering some lustre light out of heaven to stream into her heart. Presently she answered Fulviac.
"God help me to be strong," she said, "God help me to bear the burden He has put upon my soul."
"Amen, little woman."
"And now?"
"Prosper is preaching to all our men upon the cliff. He is telling them your story. I take you now to set you before them all, that they may look upon a living Saint. I leave the rest to your soul. God will tell you how to bear yourself in the cause of the people. Come, let us pray a moment."
They knelt down side by side before the crucifix, like effigies on a tomb. Fulviac's face was in shadow; Yeoland's turned heavenward to the Cross. It was her renunciation. Then they arose; Fulviac took up the scarlet banner, and they passed out together from the room.
Traversing parlour and guard-room, finding them empty and silent as a church, they came by the winding stairway in the rock to the hollow opening upon the platform above. Two sentinels stood by the rough door. Above and around, great stones had been piled up so as to form a species of natural battlement. Fulviac, bearing the banner, climbed the rocks, and signed to Yeoland to follow. They were still within a kind of rude tower, walled in by heaped blocks of stone on every side. They were alone save for the two sentinels. Above, they saw Prosper the Preacher standing on a great square mass of rock, his tall figure outlined against the sky.
They could see that the man was borne along by the strong spirit of the preacher. His arms tossed to the sky as he bent forward and preached to those invisible to Fulviac and the girl. His oratory was of a fervid, strenuous type, like fire leaping in a wind, fierce, mobile, passionate. They could see him stride to and fro on his platform, gesticulate, point to heaven, smite his bosom, strike attitudes of ecstasy. His voice rang out the while, full of subtle modulations, the pathetic abandonments, the supreme outbursts of the orator. Much that he said fell deep into the girl's heart. The man had that strange power, that magnetic influence that exists in the individual, defying analysis, yet real as the stirring witchery of great music, or as the voice of the sea.
Anon they saw him fall upon his knees, and lift his hands to the heavens. He had cast a quick glance backward over his shoulder. Prosper had soared to his zenith; he had his men listening as for the climax of some great epic. Fulviac thrust Yeoland forward up the slope. She understood the dramatic pause in an instant. Prosper's words had been like the orisons of birds preluding the dawn. She climbed the rocks, and stepped out at the kneeling monk's side.
The scene below dazed her for the moment. Many hundred faces were turned to her from the slopes at her feet. Innumerable eyes seemed fixed upon her with a mesmeric stare. She saw the whole cliff below her packed with men, every rock crowned with humanity, even the pine trees had their living burden. She saw swords waving like innumerable streaks of light; she had a confused vision of fanaticism, exultation, power. Deep seemed calling unto deep; a noise like the noise of breakers was in her ears.