Читать книгу The Inquisitor. A Novel онлайн

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Wasn't it crazy, then, after such an experience, to return? The notion had come to him on the ocean, travelling from America without a penny in his pocket. He had been idly turning over the pages of some magazine when he had been confronted with a magnificent photograph of Chartres. There it was just as he had last seen it, glorious, triumphant, flattering him with the appeal that it made to him, so that his throat contracted, his fingers curved. How many others on the boat with him would feel that delighted pleasure? He remembered then that Stephen, his wife and child, had gone, fifteen years ago, to live in Polchester in the South of England. He remembered even the name of the house—The Scarf, Polchester, Glebeshire, England.

It hit him then like a blow in the stomach. Stephen must be rich by now; twenty years of miserly saving. There would be results of that. Stephen was ten years older than himself and, even twenty years ago, had been a lanky pale-faced skeleton. And there was the Cathedral, one of the most famous in England. In that moment of time, staring at the pictures of Chartres, his mind was made up, his destiny settled.