condescend to these men without feeling uncomfortable. She could see
Millie at village teas.... The girls looked very small as they stood in
groups about the roadway.... Their clothes... their funny confidence...
being so sure of themselves... what was it... what were they so sure of?
There was nothing... and she was afraid of them all, even of Minna and
Emma sometimes.

They trailed, Minna once more safely at her side, slowly on through the
streets of the close-built peaked and gabled, carved and cobbled town.
It came nearer to her than Barnes, nearer even than the old first house
she had kissed the morning they came away--the flower-filled garden, the
river, the woods.

They turned aside and up a little mounting street and filed into a
churchyard. Fraulein tried and opened the great carved doorway of the
church... incense.... They were going into a Roman Catholic church. How
easy it was; just to walk in. Why had one never done it before? There
was one at Roehampton. But it would be different in England.

"Pas convenable," she heard Mademoiselle say just behind her, "non, je
connais ces gens-la, je vous promets... vraiment j'en ai peur...." Elsa
responded with excited enquiries. They all trooped quietly in and the
great doors closed behind them.

"Vraiment j'ai peur," whispered Mademoiselle.

Miriam saw a point of red light shining like a ruby far ahead in the
gloom. She went round the church with Fraulein Pfaff and Minna, and
was shown stations and chapels, altars hung with offerings, a dusty
tinsel-decked, gaily-painted Madonna, an alcove railed off and fitted
with an iron chandelier furnished with spikes--filled half-way up its
height by a solid mass of waxen drippings--banners and paintings and
artificial flowers, rich dark carvings. She looked at everything and
spoke once or twice.

"This is the first time I have seen a Roman Catholic church," she said,
"and 'how superstitious' when they came upon crutches and staves hanging
behind a reredos"--and all the time she breathed the incense and felt the
dimness around her and going up and up and brooding, high up.

Presently they were joined by a priest. He took them into a little room,
unlocking a heavy door which clanged to after them, opening out behind
one of the chapels. One side of the room was lined with an oaken
cupboard.

"Je frissonne."

Miriam escaped Mademoiselle's neighbourhood and got into an angle
between the frosted window and the plaster wal