Whitewash. Ethel Watts Mumford

human cry of faith—the faith of the children, and catered to as to children." What marvellous charm was in the lights, the incense, the fountain of healing, the fairy-tale statue discovered, though buried, because of the great radiance that shone over the spot! What mattered it that antiquarians ​had pronounced it a Venus, relic of the Roman occupation? Converted into St. Anne and re-carved, no saint in Christendom is more efficacious to cure—"as bread pills cure a child," she concluded, aloud. Surprised to hear her own voice, she looked up. She had become separated from her friends, and had somehow drifted to the church door. Impulsively, she entered and knelt for a moment, the better to take in the mystery of the great building, whose mighty pillars sprang upwards like giant spouts of water, and spread across the arched ceiling in a spray of lacy stone. The lights were dim, but below, by the great white altar, by the side chapels and at each pillar foot, thousands upon thousands of candles sent up a radiance mellowed and softened in the immensity of the nave.

      The darkness of confessionals and recessed chapels was gemmed with colored lamps, that vaguely showed the lines of waiting penitents. The place reeked with incense, the odor of melted wax and the vague heaviness of crowded human breaths.

      The subdued shuffling of feet, the audible ​heart-throb of prayer shook the air. Victoria was glad to be here, to throw herself into the immensity of this sea of faith—herself unbelieving. Only by an effort could she free herself from the mocking of her judgment, and she longed, yearned, to experience the exaltation of the least of these sun-tanned, ignorant tillers of the soil, or the still more romantic faith of those who plough the sea, and sow the wave-furrows with their lives and hopes. The votive ships that hung dimly overhead filled her with visions of the shipwrecks they commemorated, the hairbreadth escapes to which they attested by their presence in the sanctuary. St. Anne's shrine glowed in its concentrated mass of candles, a very saint's glory. The legended statue stood all golden, on the lower table of the altar, where kissing lips might reach the daintiness of the embroidered cloth. The church shook with the dim resonance of chimes, swung far overhead in the bell-tower. The throng, she observed, was lighting tapers at the shrine, and she became aware that each of the pilgrims crowding at her side carried a candle protected by a folded, ​funnel-shaped paper, stamped with the images of St. Anne and the Virgin. As the lights shone through the mellow translucence of the parchment, they seemed a sudden florescence of myriad calla lilies of miraculous radiance. Through the door of the chapel, into the open starlit night, the pilgrims poured, the procession carrying her along with it. She disengaged herself for a moment, and rather shamefacedly purchased a candle, and begged a light from her neighbor, a tottering old woman, the white bands of whose coif were hardly less pale than the face they framed.

      The waiting seemed endless in the crowded night, filled with snatches of hymns and songs. All was swaying life and excited unrest except the quiet, unmoved stars overhead. Then the vast illuminated procession heaved under way. Once more the chant that had brought the pilgrims to their journey's end in the afternoon burst forth, both from the candle-bearers and the dense black human hedge that lined the route.

      Gradually the exaltation of Victoria's mood faded. In its place the artist and the journalist ​awoke. How could it be described ? What words could ever bring the look of it before other eyes? What color, what inspiration of the brush, could reproduce one atom of it? Unconscious of her actions, she quenched the flame of her taper, stepped from the ranks of the procession, and, absorbed into the onlooking multitude, watched with the interest of her whole complex sensitive ness, the multitude that streamed by in the glow of the tapers.

      Wonderful! Compelling! the expressions on those peasant faces, thrown into sharp relief by the lights that burned beneath and around them. The intense realism of a Holbein, the shadowed depths of Rembrandt, the unearthly, grotesque force of Dürer, and more, more, even the rapt, enthralled enthusiasm of Fra Angelico, would be necessary to render their power. And yet, it was not to be done! Oh, the centuries bridged by those faces under the mediæval head-dresses! This was no nineteenth century. That ecstatic woman's head, in its halo of illuminated linen convolutions, must be fresh risen from some carven tomb, where its marble counterpart lies staring blankly at the ​Gothic arches overhead. These men and women around her—were they not ghosts of those serfs of ancient days, unchanged in manner, dress, or speech? It was all old, unspeakably old, a mirage of what had disappeared over the horizon of memory.

      The procession turned. Victoria, still in her dream, followed slowly. Where was she being led, she wondered vaguely; back to the tombs into which the ghostly multitude must descend and disappear until evoked again by the feast of souls or the intercession of St. Anne?

      Into the vast reverberating depths of the church they poured once more, through its echoing aisles, past its blinding altar—out again through the connecting porches into the great cloisters of the monastery. In the centre of the lantern-lighted court a gigantic crucifix lifted its head, from which, with horrible realism, a life-size figure of Christ leaned, bleeding. Choir-boys in red and white swung censers to and fro.

      The high, nasal tenor of a priest's voice intoned alone for a moment; then the responses broke from the multitude with the roar of breaking ​surf. Again the tenor of the priest, again the deep, growling bass of the crowd. The mass continued, and the memory of it remained with Victoria all her life. The smell of incense, the thin, penetrating voice, the wave thunder of the litanies. A vision of weird, illuminated faces and dimly revealed arches, of a pale, far-off, star-sprinkled sky, against which the martyred Christ silhouetted, grimly rigid. The chimes rang out—paused—and the single bourdon throbbed the hour. Victoria, to her amazement, counted twelve. Where had the time gone? It seemed hardly an hour since she slipped into the church. There was no apparent diminution of the crowd, and the enthusiasm continued at white heat. She became suddenly conscious that she was weary and footsore. Her excited nerves relaxed almost to the crying point. It was as if the stroke of midnight had destroyed the enchantment.

      Too tired to take any further interest in her surroundings, her feet and thoughts turned gratefully hotelwards. The narrow cot at her journey s end suddenly absorbed all her ambitions and hopes. With lagging steps she made her way ​out of the cloisters, and wearily crossed the square, still vaguely filled with rumor—a ghostly reminiscence of the day's tumult. When she reached the hotel office it was deserted; every one was out-of-doors, apparently. She found a candle and dragged herself up the long winding stairs and through the dark passages, guided by instinct and the smell of hay, to the little corridor connecting the main building with the lofts. Her room door gave as she touched it, but no light shone from within, and suddenly Sonia, her hair falling about her ears, her eyes wide with excitement, stood before her. Only an instant the vision lasted, her candle was extinguished, and Sonia's voice gave warning in a whisper:

      "Be quiet! Somebody is coming over the roofs!"

      In the darkness the two girls stood listening. The noise of bells in the square came vaguely to them. But distinct, though muffled, rasped the sound of some one walking cautiously over the tiles. Softly the girls crept to the window, and standing well back, could make out the top of the fire-escape leading to the courtyard.

      ​The cautious tread ceased, and was followed by a slight scraping and shuffling as of some one crawling. Victoria, with sudden inspiration, recalled a clothes-press in the wall near which she crouched. She felt for Sonia's hand in the darkness, secured the extinguished candle, cautiously opened the closet door, and entered, closing it behind her. Hurriedly she struck a light, then putting down the candle, as quickly slipped into the room once more.

      "It's ready when we want it. I closed the door so he couldn't see the light or hear the match."

      A soft pressure of Sonia's hand answered her.

      The scuffling noise continued, so slight, that had they not been on their guard it must have passed unnoticed.

      Another telegraphic squeeze passed between them as the dark bulk of a man's body and head loomed just above the iron ladder.

      A pause, in which the girls held their breath and listened to the beating of their hearts. The man looked down, listened, swung his legs clear, and placed his feet on the fire-escape.

      ​"Now!" cried Sonia, careless of noise, only anxious for