Benedetto
murmured, with straining eyes: "Father!--Father!--Father!" The sister
suggested, "Our Father who art in Heaven," and would have gone on in
her unfortunately colourless voice, had not the Professor checked her
sharply. He applied the thermometer to Benedetto, who hardly noticed
what was being done. He was absorbed in the effort to detach from his
innermost self the images of those tempting figures, and of their
horrible words; in the effort to cast himself, soul and conscience,
upon the Father's breast, to cling to Him with his whole being, to
lose himself in the Father. Slowly the images began to give way, their
assaults becoming each time more brief, less violent. His face was so
transfigured in this mystic tension of the soul, that Mayda, watching
him, was as one turned to stone, and forgot to look at his watch, until
the features, which had been contracted in that anxious prayer, finally
began to relax into a peaceful composure. Then he remembered, and
removed the thermometer. The sister, standing behind him, held up the
electric lamp, trying to see also.
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