III

In the many years since that day, I’ve become convinced that Lady Fate must have a sense of humour. At that moment when the last tremulous vibrations of our voice were nearly at their end I would have told anybody that I had seen the face of god, and that it was beautiful and terrible to behold. I felt such beauty in those dying seconds! Much later, after there was no church left in my town, and the pews were indistinguishable from the trees which had been long surrounding the church, but now formed their own holy designs on the decayed floor; I went back. I went back there, and saw beauty again. This time it was not the face of any god; it was the gentle wrath of nature and the silent march of time.