Flinging aside the morbid hesitation, and the dallyings with his own
wishes, which he had permitted to influence his mind throughout the day,
he now hastened to the Via Portoghese. Soon the old palace stood before
him, with its massive tower rising into the clouded night; obscured from
view at its midmost elevation, but revealed again, higher upward, by
the Virgin's lamp that twinkled on the summit. Feeble as it was, in
the broad, surrounding gloom, that little ray made no inconsiderable
illumination among Kenyon's sombre thoughts; for; remembering Miriam's
last words, a fantasy had seized him that he should find the sacred lamp
extinguished.
And even while he stood gazing, as a mariner at the star in which he put
his trust, the light quivered, sank, gleamed up again, and finally went
out, leaving the battlements of Hilda's tower in utter darkness. For the
first time in centuries, the consecrated and legendary flame before the
loftiest shrine in Rome had ceased to burn.