It seemed to him that he had never really heard Latin before.

Then the astonishing young woman with the red hair declaimed the CONFITEOR, vigorously and with a resonant distinctness of enunciation.

It was a different Latin, harsher and more sonorous; and while it still dominated the murmured undertone of the other's prayers, the last moment came.
Theron had stood face to face with death at many other bedsides; no other final scene had stirred him like this.

It must have been the girl's Latin chant, with its clanging reiteration of the great names--BEATUM MICHAELEM ARCHANGELUM, BEATUM JOANNEM BAPTISTAM, SANCTOS APOSTOLOS PETRUM ET PAULUM--invoked with such proud confidence in this squalid little shanty, which so strangely affected him.
He came out with the others at last--the candles and the folded hands over the crucifix left behind--and walked as one in a dream.

Even by the time that he had gained the outer doorway, and stood blinking at the bright light and filling his lungs with honest air once more, it had begun to seem incredible to him that he had seen and done all this..