seemed still to hold and radiate the tempestuous light
which had but just faded from them; the houses of a small provincial
aristocracy, immemorially old like the families which still possessed
them; close-paned, rough-hewn, and poor--yet showing here and there a
doorway, a balcony, a shrine, touched with divine beauty.

"Where _are_ all the people gone to?" cried Muriel, looking at the
secret rose-colored walls, now withdrawing into the dusk, and at the
empty street. "Not a soul anywhere!"

Presently they came to an open doorway--above it an
inscription--"Bibliotheca dei Studii Franciscani." Everything stood open
to the passer-by. They went in timidly, groped their way to the marble
stairs, and mounted. All void and tenantless! At the top of the stairs
was a library with dim bookcases and marble floors and busts; but no
custode--no reader--not a sound!

"We seem to be all alone here--with St. Francis!" said Diana, softly, as
they descended to the street--"or is everybody at church?"

They turned their steps back to the Lower Church. As they went in,
darkness--darkness sudden and profound engulfed them. They groped their
way along the outer vestibule or transept, finding themselves amid a
slowly moving crowd of peasants. The crowd turned; they with it; and a
blaze of light burst upon them.

Before them was the nave of the Lower Church, with its dark-storied
chapels on either hand, itself bathed in a golden twilight, with figures
of peasants and friars walking in it, vaguely transfigured. But the
sanctuary beyond, the altar, the walls, and low-groined roof flamed and
burned. An exposition of the Sacrament was going on. Hundreds of slender
candles arranged upon and about the altar in a blazing pyramid drew from
the habitual darkness in which they hide themselves Giotto's thrice
famous frescos; or quickened on the walls, like flowers gleaming in the
dawn, the loveliness of quiet faces, angel and saint and mother, the
beauty of draped folds at their simplest and broadest, a fairy magic of
wings and trumpets, of halos and crowns.

Now the two strangers understood why they had found Assisi itself
deserted; emptied of its folk this quiet eve. Assisi was here, in the
church which is at once the home and daily spectacle of her people. Why
stay away among the dull streets and small houses of the hill-side, when
there were these pleasures of eye and ear, this sensuous medley of light
and color, this fellowship and society,