nuns and did their work for them until they returned, repentant, to be forgiven by her; who acted always on her instinct and never on her reason; who cared nothing for legal principles; who openly used her feminine influence with the Trinity; who filled heaven with riff-raff; and who had never on any pretext driven a soul out of heaven.  Christine made peace with this jealous and divine creature.  She felt unmistakably that she was forgiven for her infidelity due to the Infant in the darkness beyond the opposite aisle.  The face of the Lady of VII Dolours miraculously smiled at her; the silver heart miraculously shed its tarnish and glittered beneficent lightnings.  Doubtless she knew somewhere in her mind that no physical change had occurred in the picture or the heart; but her mind was a complex, and like nearly all minds could disbelieve and believe simultaneously.

Just as High Mass was beginning she rose and in grave solace left the Oratory; she would not endanger her new peace with the Virgin Mary by any devotion to other gods.  She was solemn but happy.  The conductor who took her penny in the motor-bus never suspected that on the pane before her, where some Agency had caused to be printed in colour the words “Seek ye the Lord” she saw, in addition to the amazing oddness of the Anglo-Saxon race, a dangerous incitement to unfaith.  She kept her thoughts passionately on the Virgin; and by the time the bus had reached Hyde Park Corner she was utterly sure that the horrible adventure of the Promenade was purged of its evil potentialities.

In the house in Cork Street she took out her latch-key, placidly opened the door, and entered, smiling at the solitude.  Marthe, who also had a soul in need of succour, would, in the ordinary course, have gone forth to a smaller church and a late mass.  But on this particular morning fat Marthe, in deshabille, came running to her from the little kitchen.

“Oh!  Madame!...  There is someone!  He is drunk.”

Her voice was outraged.  She pointed fearfully to the bedroom.  Christine, courageous, walked straight in.  An officer in khaki was lying on the bed; his muddy, spurred boots had soiled the white lace coverlet.  He was asleep and snoring.  She looked at him, and, recognising her acquaintance of the previous night, wondered what the very clement Virgin could be about.

Chapter 17

SUNDAY AFTERNOON

“What is Madame going to do?” whispered Marthe, still alarmed and shocked, when they had both stepped back out of the bedroom; and she added:  “He has never been here before.”

Marthe was a woman of immense experience but little brains, and when phenomena passed beyond her experience she became rather like a foolish, raw girl.  She had often dealt with drunken men; she had often—­especially in her younger days—­satisfactorily explained a situation to visitors who happened to call when her mistress for the time being was out.  But only on the very rarest occasions had she known a client commit the awful solecism of calling before lunch; and that a newcomer, even intoxicated, should commit this solecism staggered her and left her trembling.