You will find that it is madness, Hal,
madness, to believe in the word "never"! You will find that you
_dare_ not leave untried any creed, howsoever wild, that offers the
heart a ray of hope.'
And then while the candle burnt out dead in the socket I sat in a
waking dream.
III
The bright light of morning was pouring through the window. I gave a
start of horror, and cried, 'Whose face?' Opposite to me there seemed
to be sitting on a bed the figure of a man with a fiery cross upon
his breast. That strange wild light upon the face, as it the pains at
the heart were flickering up through the flesh--where had I seen it?
For a moment when, in Switzerland, my father bared his bosom to me,
that ancestral flame had flashed up into his dull lineaments. But
upon the picture of 'The Sibyl' in the portrait-gallery that
illumination was perpetual!
'It is merely my own reflex in a looking-glass,' I exclaimed.
Without knowing it I had slung the cross round my neck.
And then Sinfi Lovell's voice seemed murmuring in my ears, 'Fenella
Stanley's dead and dust, and that's why she can make you put that
cross in your feyther's tomb, and she will, she will.
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