bbons stretched across the banquette
were of no avail to repress it, and important ushers with cardinal
colours could do little more.

The Sacred Heart sisters filed slowly in at the side door, creating a
momentary flutter as they paced reverently to their seats, guarding the
blue-bonneted orphans. Sister Josepha, determined to see as much of
the world as she could, kept her big black eyes opened wide, as the
church rapidly filled with the fashionably dressed, perfumed, rustling,
and self-conscious throng.

Her heart beat quickly. The rebellious thoughts that will arise in the
most philosophical of us surged in her small heavily gowned bosom. For
her were the gray things, the neutral tinted skies, the ugly garb, the
coarse meats; for them the rainbow, the ethereal airiness of earthly
joys, the bonbons and glaces of the world. Sister Josepha did not know
that the rainbow is elusive, and its colours but the illumination of
tears; she had never been told that earthly ethereality is necessarily
ephemeral, nor that bonbons and glaces, whether of the palate or of the
soul, nauseate and pall upon the taste. Dear God, forgive her, for she
bent with contrite tears over her worn rosary, and glanced no more at
the worldly glitter of femininity.

The sunbeams streamed through the high windows in purple and crimson
lights upon a veritable fugue of colour. Within the seats, crush upon
crush of spring millinery; within the aisles erect lines of
gold-braided, gold-buttoned military. Upon the altar, broad sweeps of
golden robes, great dashes of crimson skirts, mitres and gleaming
crosses, the soft neutral hue of rich lace vestments; the tender heads
of childhood in picturesque attire; the proud, golden magnificence of
the domed altar with its weighting mass of lilies and wide-eyed roses,
and the long candles that sparkled their yellow star points above the
reverent throng within the altar rails.

The soft baritone of the Cardinal intoned a single phrase in the
suspended silence. The censer took up the note in its delicate clink
clink, as it swung to and fro in the hands of a fair-haired child.
Then the organ, pausing an instant in a deep, mellow, long-drawn note,
burst suddenly into a magnificent strain, and the choir sang forth,
"Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison." One voice, flute-like, piercing,
sweet, rang high over the rest. Sister Josepha heard and trembled, as
she buried her face in her hands, and let her tears fall, l