e my marriage.

The music was Perosi's, I remember, and the voices in the _Gloria in
excelsis_, which I used to sing myself, seemed to carry up the cry of my
sorrowful heart to the very feet of the Virgin whose gracious figure
hung above me.

"Cleanse me and intercede for me, O Mother of my God."

It was as though our Blessed Lady did so, for as I walked out of the
church and down the broad steps in front of it, I had a feeling of
purity and lightness that I had never known since my time at the Sacred
Heart.

It was a beautiful day, with all the freshness and fragrance of early
morning in summer, when the white stone houses of Paris seem to blush in
the sunrise; and as I walked up the Champs Elysees on my way back to the
hotel, I met under the chestnut trees, which were then in bloom, a
little company of young girls returning to school after their first
communion.

How sweet they looked! In their white muslin frocks, white shoes and
stockings and gloves, white veils and coronets of white flowers, they
were twittering away as merrily as the little birds that were singing
unseen in the leaves above them.

It made me feel like a child myself to look at their sweet faces; but
turning into the hotel I felt like a woman too, for I thought the great
and holy mystery, the sacrament of union and love, had given me such
strength that I could meet any further wrong I might have to endure in
my walk through the world with charity and forgiveness.

But how little a woman knows of her heart until it is tried in the fires
of passion!

As I entered the salon which (as usual) divided my husband's bedroom
from mine, I came upon my maid, Price, listening intently at my
husband's closed door. This seemed to me so improper that I was
beginning to reprove her, when she put her finger to her lip and coming
over to me with her black eyes ablaze she said:

"I know you will pack me off for what I'm going to say, yet I can't help
that. You've stood too much already, my lady, but if you are a woman and
have any pride in yourself as a wife, go and listen at that door and see
if you can stand any more."

With that she went out of the salon, and I tried to go to my own room,
but I could not stir. Something held me to the spot on which I stood,
and I found myself listening to the voices which I could distinctly hear
in my husband's bedroom.

There were two voices, one a man's, loud and reckless, the other a
woman's soft and cautious.