He Was There, To Be Sure, An Alien And A Heretic, Out Of Mere Curiosity, And They Were There Probably

So rapt in their devout attention that they did not notice their errant step-brother, and so did not think

To offer him the hospitality of their mother church's house. But he would not make any such allowance; he condemned them with the unsparing severity of the strap-hanger in a trolley-car, who blushes with shame for the serried rows of men sitting behind their newspapers. When he was at his wit's end to find excuse for them a priest on another bench made room, and he sank down glad to forgive and forget; but now he would not have yielded his place to any other Protesant in Christendom.

In the collective curiosity he lost the sense of self-reproach for his own, and eagerly bent his gaze on the group of officiating priests at the high altar beyond the grille of the choir. The altar was all a blaze of electric lights, and there was a novel effect in their composition in the crosses resting diagonally on either side of it. Next the grille showed the feathers and fashions of the mothers and sisters of the young girls from the school of the adjoining Convent of the Sacred Heart, and midway between these visitors, like a flock of white birds stooping on some heavenly plain, the white veils of the girls stretched in lovely levels to left and right. Nothing could have attuned the spirit for the surprise awaiting it like this angelic sight; and when the voices of the nuns fell suddenly from the organ gallery, behind all the people, like the singing of the morning stars molten in one adoring music and falling from the zenith down, whatever moments of innocent joy life might have had it could have had none surpassing that.

But when we came out the self-mockery with which life is apt to recover itself from any exaltation began. In returning from the Pincio the only cab we had been able to get was the last left of the very worst cabs in Rome, and we had bidden the driver wait for us at the church-steps, not without some hope that he would play us false. But there he was, true to his word, with such disciplined fidelity as that of the Roman sentinels who used to die at their posts; and we mounted to ours with the muted prayer that we, at least, might reach home alive. This did not seem probable when the driver whipped up his horse. It appeared to have aged and sickened while we were in the church, though we had thought it looked as bad as could be before, and it lurched alarmingly from side to side, recovering itself with a plunge of its heavy head away from the side in which its body was sinking. The driver swayed on his box, having fallen equally decrepit in spite of the restoratives he seemed to have applied for his years and infirmities.

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