tificial flowers flanked it.
Behind it, in a round niche, stood a painted figure of Christ holding
a book. The two adjacent side chapels had domed roofs representing the
firmament. Beneath the pulpit stood a small harmonium. At the opposite
end of the church was a high gallery holding more chairs. The mean,
featureless windows were filled with glass half white, half staring red
dotted with yellow crosses. Round the walls were reliefs of the fourteen
stations of the Cross in white plaster on a gilt ground framed in grey
marble. From the roof hung vulgar glass chandeliers with ropes tied
with faded pink ribands. Several frightful plaster statues daubed
with scarlet and chocolate brown stood under the windows, which were
protected with brown woollen curtains. Close to the entrance were a
receptacle for holy water in the form of a shell, and a confessional of
stone flanked by boxes, one of which bore the words, "Graces obtenues,"
the other, "Demandes," and a card on which was printed, "Litanies en
honneur de Saint Antoine de Padoue."

There was nothing to please the eye, nothing to appeal to the senses.
There was not even the mystery which shrouds and softens, for the
sunshine streamed in through the white glass of the windows, revealing,
even emphasising, as if with deliberate cruelty, the cheap finery, the
tarnished velvet, the crude colours, the meretricious gestures and poses
of the plaster saints. Yet as Domini touched her forehead and breast
with holy water, and knelt for a moment on the stone floor, she was
conscious that this rather pitiful house of God moved her to an emotion
she had not felt in the great and beautiful churches to which she was
accustomed in England and on the Continent. Through the windows she saw
the outlines of palm leaves vibrating in the breeze; African fingers,
feeling, with a sort of fluttering suspicion, if not enmity, round the
heart of this intruding religion, which had wandered hither from some
distant place, and, stayed, confronting the burning glance of the
desert. Bold, little, humble church! Domini knew that she would love it.
But she did not know then how much.

She wandered round slowly with a grave face. Yet now and then, as she
stood by one of the plaster saints, she smiled. They were indeed strange
offerings at the shrine of Him who held this Africa in the hollow of His
hand, of Him who had ordered the pageant of the sun which she had seen
last night among the mountains. And pr