esently she and this little church
in which she stood alone became pathetic in her thoughts, and even the
religion which the one came to profess in the other pathetic too. For
here, in Africa, she began to realise the wideness of the world, and
that many things must surely seem to the Creator what these plaster
saints seemed just then to her.

"Oh, how little, how little!" she whispered to herself. "Let me be
bigger! Oh, let me grow, and here, not only hereafter!"

The church door creaked. She turned her head and saw the priest whom she
had met in the tunnel entering. He came up to her at once, saluted her,
and said:

"I saw you from my window, Madame, and thought I would offer to show you
our little church here. We are very proud of it."

Domini liked his voice and his naive remark. His face, too, though
undistinguished, looked honest, kind, and pathetic, but with a pathos
that was unaffected and quite unconscious. The lower part of it was
hidden by a moustache and beard.

"Thank you," she answered. "I have been looking round already."

"You are a Catholic, Madame?"

"Yes."

The priest looked pleased. There was something childlike in the mobility
of his face.

"I am glad," he said simply. "We are not a rich community in Beni-Mora,
but we have been fortunate in bygone years. Our great Cardinal, the
Father of Africa, loved this place and cherished his children here."

"Cardinal Lavigerie?"

"Yes, Madame. His house is now a native hospital. His statue faces the
beginning of the great desert road, But we remember him and his spirit
is still among us."

The priest's eyes lit up as he spoke. The almost tragic expression of
his face changed to one of enthusiasm.

"He loved Africa, I believe," Domini said.

"His heart was here. And what he did! I was to have been one of his
_freres armes_, but my health prevented, and afterwards the association
was dissolved."

The sad expression returned to his face.

"There are many temptations in such a land and climate as this," he
said. "And men are weak. But there are still the White Fathers whom he
founded. Glorious men. They carry the Cross into the wildest places of
the world. The most fanatical Arabs respect the White Marabouts."

"You wish you were with them?"

"Yes, Madame. But my health only permits me to be a humble parish priest
here. Not all who desire to enter the most severe life can do so. If
it were otherwise I should long since have been a monk. The