guidance of Sisters, troops of
peasant women and countrymen, poured out of every aisle, knelt in front
of the image, and then came up to kiss the pedestal.

The appearance of these folks suggested to Durtal that their prayers
were not like those that are sobbed out at evening twilight, the
supplications of women worn and dismayed by the weary hours of day.
These peasant souls prayed less as complaining than as loving; these
people, kneeling on the flags, had come for Her sake rather than for
their own. There was here and now a pause from grieving, a sort of
reprieve from tears; and this attitude was in harmony with the special
aspect adopted by Mary in this cathedral; She was seen there, in fact,
under the form of a child and of a young mother; She was the Virgin of
the Nativity, rather than our Lady of Dolour. The old artists of the
Middle Ages seemed to have feared to sadden Her by reminding Her of
memories too painful, to have striven to prove by this delicate reserve,
their gratitude to Her who in this sanctuary had ever shown Herself to
be the Dispenser of Mercies, the Lady Bountiful of Grace.

Durtal felt in himself an answering thrill, the echo of the prayers
chanted all round him by these loving souls; and he let himself melt
away in the soothing sweetness of the hymns, asking for nothing,
silencing his ungratified desires, smothering his secret repining,
thinking only of bidding an affectionate good-morning to the Mother to
whom he had returned after such distant wanderings in the land of sin,
after such a long absence.

And now that he had seen Her, that he had spoken to Her, he withdrew,
making room for others who came in greater numbers as the day grew. He
went home to get some food; and as he cast a last sweeping glance at the
beautiful church, remembering the warlike imagery of its details, the
buckler-shape of the rose-windows, the sword-blades of the lower lights,
the casque and helmet forms of the ogee, the resemblance of some
grisaille glass with its network of lead to a warrior's shirt of mascled
mail; as, outside, he gazed at one of the two belfries carved into
scales like a pine cone--like scale-armour--he said to himself that the
"Builders for God" must have borrowed their ideas from the military
panoply of the knights; that thus they had endeavoured to perpetuate the
memory of their exploits by representing the magnified image of the
armour with which the Crusaders girt themselves when they sai