of marble which covers the tombstone, some of them
smiling with joy, some of them weeping bitterly, some of them with
quiet, business-like devotion as if they were performing a duty. The
priest of their faith blesses them, sprinkles the relics which they lay
on the altar with holy water, and one by one the pilgrims retire
backward through the low portal.

I saw a Russian peasant, sad-eyed, wrinkled, bent with many sorrows, lay
his cheek silently on the tombstone with a look on his face as if he
were a child leaning against his mother's breast. I saw a little
barefoot boy of Jerusalem, with big, serious eyes, come quickly in, and
try to kiss the stone; but it was too high for him, so he kissed his
hand and laid it upon the altar. I saw a young nun, hardly more than a
girl, slender, pale, dark-eyed, with a noble Italian face, shaken with
sobs, the tears running down her cheeks, as she bent to touch her lips
to the resting-place of the Friend of Sinners.

This, then, is the way in which the craving for penitence, for
reverence, for devotion, for some utterance of the nameless thirst and
passion of the soul leads these pilgrims. This is the form in which the
divine mystery of sacrificial sorrow and death appeals to them, speaks
to their hearts and comforts them.

Could any Christian of whatever creed, could any son of woman with a
heart to feel the trouble and longing of humanity, turn his back upon
that altar? Must I not go away from that mysterious little room as the
others had gone, with my face toward the stone of remembrance, stooping
through the lowly door?

And yet--and yet in my deepest heart I was thirsty for the open air,
the blue sky, the pure sunlight, the tranquillity of large and silent
spaces.

The Lady went with me across the crowded quadrangle into the cool,
clean, quiet German Church of the Redeemer. We climbed to the top of the
lofty bell tower.

Jerusalem lay at our feet, with its network of streets and lanes,
archways and convent walls, domes small and great--the black Dome of the
Rock in the centre of its wide inclosure, the red dome and the green
dome of the Jewish synagogues on Mount Zion, the seven gilded domes of
the Russian Church of Saint Mary Magdalen, a hundred tiny domes of
dwelling-houses, and right in front of us the yellow dome of the Greek
"Centre of the World" and the black dome of the Holy Sepulchre.

The quadrangle was still full of people buying and selling, but the
murmur of