oft side of a pillar hesitated whether to make
some young priests spreading over undue space on one of the benches push
up, and he enjoyed a rich moment of self-satisfaction in his
forbearance. 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 Protestant 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