“Had I met you yesterday, I might have told you that,” she replied.  “To-day, there is no need.”

“Your happiness, then?” said the sculptor, as sadly as before.  “Whence comes it?”

“A great burden has been lifted from my heart—­from my conscience, I had almost said,”—­answered Hilda, without shunning the glance that he fixed upon her.  “I am a new creature, since this morning, Heaven be praised for it!  It was a blessed hour—­a blessed impulse—­that brought me to this beautiful and glorious cathedral.  I shall hold it in loving remembrance while I live, as the spot where I found infinite peace after infinite trouble.”

Her heart seemed so full, that it spilt its new gush of happiness, as it were, like rich and sunny wine out of an over-brimming goblet.  Kenyon saw that she was in one of those moods of elevated feeling, when the soul is upheld by a strange tranquility, which is really more passionate and less controllable than emotions far exceeding it in violence.  He felt that there would be indelicacy, if he ought not rather to call it impiety, in his stealing upon Hilda, while she was thus beyond her own guardianship, and surprising her out of secrets which she might afterwards bitterly regret betraying to him.  Therefore, though yearning to know what had happened, he resolved to forbear further question.

Simple and earnest people, however, being accustomed to speak from their genuine impulses, cannot easily, as craftier men do, avoid the subject which they have at heart.  As often as the sculptor unclosed his lips, such words as these were ready to burst out:—­“Hilda, have you flung your angelic purity into that mass of unspeakable corruption, the Roman Church?”

“What were you saying?” she asked, as Kenyon forced back an almost uttered exclamation of this kind.

“I was thinking of what you have just remarked about the cathedral,” said he, looking up into the mighty hollow of the dome.  “It is indeed a magnificent structure, and an adequate expression of the Faith which built it.  When I behold it in a proper mood,—­that is to say, when I bring my mind into a fair relation with the minds and purposes of its spiritual and material architects,—­I see but one or two criticisms to make.  One is, that it needs painted windows.”

“O, no!” said Hilda.  “They would be quite inconsistent with so much richness of color in the interior of the church.  Besides, it is a Gothic ornament, and only suited to that style of architecture, which requires a gorgeous dimness.”

“Nevertheless,” continued the sculptor, “yonder square apertures, filled with ordinary panes of glass, are quite out of keeping with the superabundant splendor of everything about them.  They remind me of that portion of Aladdin’s palace which he left unfinished, in order that his royal father-in-law might put the finishing touch.  Daylight, in its natural state, ought not to be admitted here.  It should stream through a brilliant illusion of saints and hierarchies, and old scriptural images, and symbolized dogmas, purple, blue, golden, and a broad flame of scarlet.  Then, it would be just such an illumination as the Catholic faith allows to its believers.  But, give me—­to live and die in—­the pure, white light of heaven!”