once, when it struck her that the question
involved more than she supposed. She would have answered,--"Why, saying
my prayers:" but the idea came to her, _Was_ that prayer? And she felt
instinctively that, necessarily, it was not. She thought a moment, and
then answered slowly;--

"I would say that it is to ask somewhat with full desire to obtain the
same."

"Is that all?" replied Mr Tremayne.

Blanche thought so.

"Methinks there is more therein than so. For it implieth, beyond this,
full belief that he whom you shall ask,--firstly, can hear you;
secondly, is able to grant you; thirdly, is willing to grant you."

"Surely the saints be willing to pray for us!"

"How know you they can hear us?"

Blanche thought, and thought, and could find no reason for supposing it.

"Again, how know you they can grant us?"

"But they pray!"

"They praise, and they hold communion: I know not whether they offer
petitions or no."

Blanche sat meditating.

"You see, therefore, there is no certainty on the first and most weighty
of all these points. We know not that any saint can hear us. But pass
that--grant, for our talk's sake, that they have knowledge of what
passeth on earth, and can hear when we do speak to them. How then?
Here is Saint Mary, our Lord's mother, sitting in Heaven; and upon earth
there be petitions a-coming up unto her, at one time, from Loretto in
Italy, and from Nuremburg in Germany, and from Seville in Spain, and
from Bruges in Flanders, and from Paris in France, and from Bideford in
Devon, and from Kirkham in Lancashire. Mistress Blanche, if she can
hear and make distinction betwixt all these at the self-same moment,
then is she no woman like to you. Your brain should be mazed with the
din, and spent with the labour. Invocation declareth omnipotency. And
there is none almighty save One,--that is, God."

"But," urged Blanche, "the body may be one whither, and the spirit
another. And Saint Mary is a spirit."

"Truly so. Yet the spirit can scantly be in ten places at one time--how
much less a thousand?"

Blanche was silent.

"The next thing, I take it, is that they pray not unto the saints, but
do ask the saints only to pray for them. If the saints hear them not,
the one is as futile as the other. But I deny that they do not pray
unto the saints."

Mr Tremayne went to his bookcase, and came back with a volume in his
hand.

"Listen here, I pray you--`Blessed Virgin, Mother of God,