d them it was as if a cool hand had been laid on her
aching heart. Here was peace.

The Good Shepherd in the round window seemed to mean much as he looked
down at her, and even the statue of the Mother and Child in the altar to
her left looked beautiful to her. "Salve Regina, Mater Misericordiae,"
she read.

To the right of the main altar a group of tiny votive candles were
burning; an old nun in a kind of white sunbonnet, draped with a black
gauze veil, dropped her rosary with a little clatter to the wooden
floor.

There were only a dozen or so people in the church, but this made no
difference. The priest would not feel slighted, as an Anglican curate
might. He had a serious ascetic face, and seemed not to know that any
was present beside his God and himself.

"I am a brute," Brigit told herself, "a perfect fiend to torture him so.
Why cannot we be good to each other? And how will it all end? I will be
good to him in the future."

Then she shivered, for she was not a child and realised perfectly that
her "being good" to Joyselle was by no means altogether safe.

"It is playing with fire," she thought. "That is one reason why I _am_
so horrid, perhaps."

The priest had gone, and the little congregation, with last
genuflections, were hurrying out of the church. Busy people, these;
workers who before their day's labour begins have always time to say
_Bonjour_ to their God.

"A beautiful church, _hein_?" asked Felicite, as they came out of the
church. "You liked it, my daughter?"

"Yes. I liked it. Where do we go now, _petite mere_?"

More than one passerby turned to stare at the beautiful girl with the
weary eyes and her humble companion as they made their way towards
Rupert Street. With the violently sudden change of mood that was part of
her character, Brigit's spirits had gone up. She would be kind to
Joyselle; that would be being kind to herself, and therefore she would
be happy. In an hour they would be at home and she would see him. A
great longing to feel his strong arms round her came to her, and her
face flushed as she decided to go to him frankly and ask to be taken
back.

"It is a beautiful day," she said softly.

Felicite smiled up at her.

"Yes. And it is good to begin a day by going to Mass. It clears one's
mind of yesterday, and to-day is--ours, Brigitte."

For all her native shrewdness, it would not at all have surprised
Felicite if Brigit had suddenly become _devote_, and even now as sh