Through the quiet silence Gillian made her way up the short central aisle until she reached the chancel steps. For a few minutes she knelt, her face crushed against the flowers she held, in silent passionate prayer that knew neither form nor words--a soundless supplication that was an inchoate appeal to a God of infinite understanding. Then rising slowly she pushed back the iron gate and went into the chancel. Directly to the left the new monument gleamed cleanly white against the old dark wall. Simple and bold, as she would herself have designed it, the sculptor's memorial was the work of the greatest genius of the day who had willingly come from France at Craven's invitation to perpetuate the memory of a sister artist who had also been a lifelong friend.
A rugged pedestal of green bronze--with an inset panel representing the tragedy--rose upward in the shape of billowing curling waves supporting a marble Christ standing erect with outstretched pitying hand, majestic and yet wholly human.
Gillian gazed upward with quivering lips at the Saviour's inclined tender face, and opening her arms let the scented mass of crimson blossom fall slowly to the slab at her feet that bore Miss Craven's name and Mary's cut side by side.
"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."
She read the words aloud, and with a stifled sob slipped down among the roses and carnations that Caro Craven had loved, and leaned her aching head against the cool hard bronze. "Dearest," she whispered, in an agony of tears, "I wonder can you hear? I wonder are you allowed, where you are, to know what happens here on earth? Oh, Aunt Caro, cherie, do you know that I have failed--failed to bring him the peace and consolation I thought my love was strong enough to give, I have tried so hard to understand, to help ... I have prayed so earnestly that he might turn to me, that I might be to him what you would have me be ... but I have not been able ... I have failed him ... failed you ... myself. Oh, dearest, do you know?"
Prone among the roses, at the feet of the pitying Christ, she cried aloud in her desperate loneliness to the dead woman who had given her the tenderest love she had ever known. The shadows lengthened widely before she rose and drew the scattered flowers into a fragrant heap. She stood for a while studying intently the relief of the wreck; it suggested a train of thought, and with a sudden impulse she traversed the chancel and sought among the memorials of dead Cravens for the tablets commemorating those who had disappeared or died tragically. By chance at first and later by design these had all been placed within the confines of the chancel that formed so large a part of the tiny church. Before the florid Italian monument that recorded all that was known of the short life of the Elizabethan adventurer she paused long, looking with quickening heart-beat at the graceful kneeling figure whose face and form were those of the man she loved.