As the hours passed her eyes grew hot and heavy with sleep; the long night began to weigh her down, as Tristan slept on and took no heed. Soon her head sank upon her shoulder, the very gloom seemed to grow more dim, and the noise of the wind ebbed from her ears. She drooped down in the great chair, her hands lying open in her lap, her hair clouding over her face. Sleep wiped the tired lines away from her mouth, and her large eyes strained towards the lamp no more.
That night Rosamunde dreamed a dream, a mystic vision, as though the God who watches over the ways of men had sent some seraph to His child. It seemed to her that she stood alone within the ruined chapel upon the rock. The chapel was full of golden vapour, a magic mist that seemed to move in luminous whorls towards the roof. The high altar was hid in gloom, as though a cloud enveloped it, like purple smoke over the moon. Even as she stood gazing in silent awe, a white arm was thrust from out the cloud, pointing its finger towards the floor that lay below the altar steps. A golden ray seemed to fall from the hand upon a stone a full cubit square. Letters of fire were traced on the flag. The purple vapour was rent aside, and in that dream shrine Rosamunde saw the White Christ bending from the Cross.
“Believe,” the Christ’s eyes seemed to say.
Then, with a sudden stream of light and a great sound as of a thunder-clap, the whole chapel rocked and sank into an abyss that had no ending.
With a cry Rosamunde awoke and stared around her in the room. Trembling, she sat up in the chair, awe and fear upon her face, as she remembered the vision she had seen. Tristan was still sleeping on the bed, and the great abbey was silent as death, save that she heard the sound of the sea.
Trembling and amazed, Rosamunde rose up like one whose soul groped in the dark towards the truth. She passed her hand over her heavy eyes, looked at Tristan as he slept close by the window where the night streamed in. Stung by sudden hope, she crossed the room, took the lamp from the sconce in the wall, passed out, and climbed towards the chapel. Up the great stair she made her way, the lamplight flashing on the walls and into her white palm as she shaded the flame. The wind played round her from above, moving her hair about her face. Her eyes were filled with hope and fear, like pools where darkness and moonlight mingle.
So through the gloomy galleries she came into the chapel of Holy Guard. Standing by the door with the lamp held high, she looked round under the ruined roof, as though half thinking to see her dream repeat its mysteries before her eyes. The lamplight quivered on the broken stones, the fallen rafters of the roof, and the snapped pillars that lay around. Above the altar the Cross still stood, but there was no purple mist about its limbs, no golden vapour filling the place.
Holding her lamp above her head, Rosamunde pressed forward over the ruinous floor towards the altar shrouded deep in gloom. Bending low, she gazed at the flagstones one by one as she passed up the aisle, lifting the broken rafters aside and thrusting away the fallen tiles. Before the very altar steps she came to a stone covered with words which she could not read. Kneeling and setting the lamp on the floor, she drew a poniard out of her girdle and worked at the joints with the point thereof.
Soon the stone lurched up, showing a streak of darkness beneath, for there was a goodly cavity under the flag. Bending low, and turning the stone back on its face, she groped in the darkness till her fingers touched the smooth lid of a metal box. Very slowly she lifted it out, laid it in her lap as she half knelt on the floor, and turned the clasp that fastened the lid. Lying within was a glass phial filled with a fluid red as blood, also some yellow silken stuff that looked to her like an eastern veil.
Rosamunde set the phial on the floor and held up the veil before the lamp. Even as the light came streaming through, a golden halo glowed round a face calm and grand as the face of a god. Great awe came down on Rosamunde’s soul, for she seemed to gaze on the face of the Christ.