of
Good. The moral of the picture, the immortal youth and loveliness of
virtue, and its irresistibles might against ugly Evil, appealed as much
to Puritans as Catholics.

Suddenly, and as if it were done in a dream, Hilda found herself
kneeling before the shrine, under the ever-burning lamp that throws
its rays upon the Archangel's face. She laid her forehead on the marble
steps before the altar, and sobbed out a prayer; she hardly knew to
whom, whether Michael, the Virgin, or the Father; she hardly knew for
what, save only a vague longing, that thus the burden of her spirit
might be lightened a little.

In an instant she snatched herself up, as it were, from her knees, all
a-throb with the emotions which were struggling to force their way out
of her heart by the avenue that had so nearly been opened for them. Yet
there was a strange sense of relief won by that momentary, passionate
prayer; a strange joy, moreover, whether from what she had done, or for
what she had escaped doing, Hilda could not tell. But she felt as one
half stifled, who has stolen a breath of air.

Next to the shrine where she had knelt there is another, adorned with
a picture by Guercino, representing a maiden's body in the jaws of the
sepulchre, and her lover weeping over it; while her beatified spirit
looks down upon the scene, in the society of the Saviour and a throng
of saints. Hilda wondered if it were not possible, by some miracle of
faith, so to rise above her present despondency that she might look down
upon what she was, just as Petronilla in the picture looked at her own
corpse. A hope, born of hysteric trouble, fluttered in her heart. A
presentiment, or what she fancied such, whispered her, that, before she
had finished the circuit of the cathedral, relief would come.

The unhappy are continually tantalized by similar delusions of succor
near at hand; at least, the despair is very dark that has no such
will-o'-the-wisp to glimmer in it.

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE WORLD'S CATHEDRAL

Still gliding onward, Hilda now looked up into the dome, where the
sunshine came through the western windows, and threw across long shafts
of light. They rested upon the mosaic figures of two evangelists above
the cornice. These great beams of radiance, traversing what seemed the
empty space, were made visible in misty glory, by the holy cloud of
incense, else unseen, which had risen into the middle dome. It was to
Hilda as if she beheld the wor