I, too, moved toward that spot with the intent of peering through the double gratings which isolated the choir from the rest of the church. It seemed borne in upon me that I must know the face of that woman of whom I had seen only--and for one instant--the hand; and opening my eyes to their widest extent and dilating the pupils in the effort to give them greater power and penetration, I strained my gaze on to the deepest recesses of the choir. Fruitless attempt; across the interwoven irons, little or nothing could be seen. Some white and black phantoms moving amidst a gloom against which fought in vain the inadequate radiance of a few tall wax candles; a long line of lofty, crocketed sedilia, crowned with canopies, beneath which might be divined, veiled by the dusk, the indistinct figures of nuns clad in long flowing robes; a crucifix illuminated by four candles and standing out against the dark background of the picture as those points of high light which, on the canvases of Rembrandt, make the shadows more palpable; this was the utmost that could be discerned from the place where I stood.
The priests, covered with their gold-bordered copes, preceded by acolytes who bore a silver cross and two great candles, and followed by others who swung censers that shed perfume all about, advancing through the throng of the faithful who kissed their hands and the hems of their vestments, finally reached the choir-screen.
Up to this moment I had not been able to distinguish, amid the other vague phantoms, that of the maiden who was about to consecrate herself to Christ.
Have you never seen, in those last instants of twilight, a shred of mist rise from the waters of a river, the surface of a fen, the waves of the sea, or the deep heart of a mountain tarn,--a shred of mist that floats slowly in the void, and now looks like a woman moving, walking, trailing her gown behind her, now like a white veil fastening the tresses of an invisible sylph, now a ghost which rises in the air hiding its yellow bones beneath a winding-sheet against which is still seen outlined its angular shape? Such was the hallucination I experienced in beholding draw near the screen, as if detaching herself from the sombre depth of the choir, that white, tall, most lightly moving form.