Читать книгу The Inquisitor. A Novel онлайн

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The fantasy was so strong that he scarcely dared to raise his eyes, and when at last he glanced about him, piercing the wavering light of the candles, he still could not be entirely resolved. In his ears and in his eyes there was a conviction of a pressing multitude and he felt that thousands of eyes were bent upon himself.

He was apprehensive; he was suddenly afraid. It was like a nightmare that he sometimes had of making some fearful blunder before a critical company. In his dream he realized that pause, that look of wonder and that awful certainty within himself that he had, in a moment of incautiousness, made a mistake that nothing now could undo. Slowly his eyes cleared. The Cathedral was empty save for the little gathering of human beings about him. Only, as he looked towards the altar he fancied that one high, thin figure remained, black, motionless, solitary. Then that illusion also passed. The choir was filing out, Broad the verger preceded Dale and Moffit—old Moffit, his head bent, tap-tapping with his stick.