When they came at last to the church, they were both sorry. It had been glorious to walk along arm in arm, and to talk of the dream-house in the deep wood.
Within the church there were candles on the altar. The figure of the young warrior on the window showed pale in the dim light. Crispin and Hildegarde knelt side by side in one of the back pews, and suddenly through the church surged the music, echoes of the song the angels sang one sacred, shining night. And rising above all the other voices, clear, triumphant, Hildegarde seemed to hear her mother singing.
Through all the years she and Crispin and her mother had gone to early Christmas service. They had always walked, and Crispin had met them at the edge of town. Those had been glorious pilgrimages. Things to remember. Perhaps, some day, this would be a thing to remember—this dim, little church with its illumined warrior, and its candles shining, and Crispin beside her—a warrior, too, of a kind, fighting as youth must always fight to hold its bright ideals.
When, after the service, they came out of the church, they found the pale gray of the dawn. The waters of the Bay were opalescent, and as they walked along, the trees and bushes, and the hills behind them, had a spectral look like a mirage, or a reflection in a mirror. The dogs ran ahead of them, loping along in a sort of rapturous joy of movement, running back now and then as if to double the delights of the distance.
"How happy they are!" Hildegarde said.
He looked down at her. "Hildegarde, I want to make you happy."
"I wish you might, but we are both so young to
