Those Somber Figures Which Clustered Before Chapel, Or Singly Dotted The Pavement Everywhere, Flitted In And Out Like Shadows In The Perpetual Twilight.

For far the greater number, their coming to the church was almost their sole escape into the world.

They sometimes met friends, and after a moment, or an hour, of prayer they could cheer their hearts with neighborly gossip. But for the greater part they appeared and disappeared silently and swiftly, and left the spectator to helpless conjecture of their history. Many of them would have first met their husbands in the cathedral when they prayed, or when they began to look around to see who was looking at them. It might have been their trysting-place, safeguarding them in their lovers' meetings, and after marriage it had become their social world, when their husbands left them for the clubs or the cafes. They could not go at night, of course, except to some special function, but they could come by day as often as they liked. I do not suppose that the worshipers I saw habitually united love or friendship with their devotions in the cathedral, but some certainly joined business with devotion; at a high function one day an American girl felt herself sharply nudged in the side, and when she turned she found the palm of her kneeling neighbor stretched toward her. They must all have had their parish churches besides the cathedral, and a devotee might make the day a social whirl by visiting one shrine after another.

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