Read "The Seven Streams" by Warwick Deeping online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
For a night and a day Tristan le Sauvage had watched his arms before the high altar of the chapel of Purple Isle. For a night and a day he had seen the long tapers glimmering towards their silver sockets, under the painted roof. Dawn light and evening glow had shone through the latticed casements east and west, dusting the stones with colour, carving deep shadows from sculptured pillar and from moulded arch. Not a sound had broken the silence of the tombs. Alone before the Great Cross, Tristan had kept vigil, chastening his manhood for quest beyond the sea. Two months had passed since a great ship with gleaming sails had swooped like a falcon upon Purple Isle, and carried thence that white dove, Columbe the Fair.
The sun had descended in a whorl of crimson flame when Tristan rose up from before the altar, and passed out to his kinsfolk who had gathered at sunset in the chapel court. The moon had climbed the starry port of heaven. In the court lamps flickered, and white faces peered at him like pale flowers out of the gloom. The delicate finials of many cypresses were smitten with the moonlight; a thin perfume of spring quivered in the air.