ctuary lamp, married with St.
Francis--Christ himself joining their hands.

So Love and Sorrow pledged each other in the gleaming color of the roof.
Divine Love spoke from the altar, and in the crypt beneath their feet
which held the tomb of the Poverello the ashes of Love slept.

The girl's desolate heart melted within her. In these weeks of groping,
religion had not meant much to her. It had been like a bird-voice which
night silences. All the energy of her life had gone into endurance. But
now it was as though her soul plunged into the freshness of vast waters,
which upheld and sustained--without effort. Amid the shadows and
phantasms of the church--between the faces on the walls and the kneeling
peasants, both equally significant and alive--those ghosts of her own
heart that moved with her perpetually in the life of memory stood, or
knelt, or gazed, with the rest: the piteous figure of her mother; her
father's gray hair and faltering step; Oliver's tall youth. Never would
she escape them any more; they were to be the comrades of her life, for
Nature had given her no powers of forgetting. But here, in the shrine of
St. Francis, it was as though the worst smart of her anguish dropped
from her. From the dark splendor, the storied beauty of the church,
voices of compassion and of peace spoke to her pain; the waves of
feeling bore her on, unresisting; she closed her eyes against the
lights, holding back the tears. Life seemed suspended, and
suffering ceased.

* * * * *

"So we have tracked you!" whispered a voice in her ear. She looked up
startled. Three English travellers had quietly made their way to the
back of the altar. Sir James Chide stood beside her; and behind him the
substantial form of Mr. Ferrier, with the merry snub-nosed face of
Bobbie Forbes smiling over the great man's shoulder.

Diana--smiling back--put a finger to her lip; the service was at its
height, and close as they were to the altar decorum was necessary.
Presently, guided by her, they moved softly on to a remoter and
darker corner.

"Couldn't we escape to the Upper Church?" asked Chide of Diana.

She nodded, and led the way. They stole in and out of the kneeling
groups of the north transept, and were soon climbing the stairway that
links the two churches, out of sight and hearing of the multitude below.
Here there was again pale daylight. Greetings were interchanged, and
both Chide and Ferrier studied Diana'