intensely admired her. He was mad about her. His bliss was extreme. He
could not keep it within bounds meet for the great world-catastrophe.
He was happy as for quite ten years he had never hoped to be. Yes, he
grieved for Concepcion; but somehow grief could not mingle with nor
impair the happiness he felt. And was not Concepcion lying in the
affectionate arms of Queenie Paulle?

Christine, glancing about her contentedly, reverted to one of her
leading ideas:

"Truly, it is very romantic, thy London!"

Chapter 16

THE VIRGIN

Christine went into the oratory of St. Philip at Brompton on a Sunday
morning in the following January, dipped her finger into one of the
Italian basins at the entrance, and signed herself with the holy
water. She was dressed in black; she had the face of a pretty martyr;
her brow was crumpled by the world's sorrow; she looked and actually
was at the moment intensely religious. She had months earlier chosen
the Brompton Oratory for her devotions, partly because of the name of
Philip, which had been murmured in accents of affection by her
dying mother, and partly because it lay on a direct, comprehensible
bus-route from Piccadilly. You got into the motor-bus opposite the end
of the Burlington Arcade, and in about six minutes it dropped you in
front of the Oratory; and you could not possibly lose yourself in the
topographical intricacies of the unknown city. Christine never took a
taxi except when on business.

The interior was gloomy with the winter forenoon; the broad
Renaissance arches showed themselves only faintly above; on every side
there were little archipelagos of light made by groups of candles in
front of great pale images. The church was comparatively empty, and
most of the people present were kneeling in the chapels; for Christine
had purposely come, as she always did, at the slack hour between the
seventh and last of the early morning Low Masses and the High Mass at
eleven.

She went up the right aisle and stopped before the Miraculous Infant
Jesus of Prague, a charming and naive little figure about eighteen
inches high in a stiff embroidered cloak and a huge symbol upon his
curly head. She had put herself under the protection of the Miraculous
Infant Jesus of Prague. She liked him; he was a change from the
Virgin; and he stood in the darkest corner of the whole interior,
behind the black statue of St. Peter with protruding toe, and within
the deep shadow made by the o