There
came over me, whence I know not, a sudden conviction of the fearful
power of Evil, a sudden realisation, as though I had been shown
something, a scene or a picture or writing which had brought this home
to me.... The lights seemed to darken, the priest's figure faded, and I
felt as though the message that some one had been trying to deliver to
me had been withdrawn. I waited a moment, looking about me in a
bewildered fashion, as though I had in reality just woken from sleep.
Then I left the church.
Outside the cold air was intense. I walked to the end of the Quay and
leaned on the stone parapet. The Neva seemed vast like a huge, white,
impending shadow; it swept in a colossal wave of frozen ice out to the
far horizon, where tiny, twinkling lights met it and closed it in. The
bridges that crossed it held forth their lights, and there were the
gleams, like travelling stars, of the passing trams, but all these were
utterly insignificant against the vast body of the contemptuous ice. On
the farther shore the buildings rose in a thin, tapering line, looking
as though they had been made of black tissue paper, against the solid
weight of the cold, stony sky.
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