e in three dimensions of real silver and pierced by the
swords of the seven dolours, three to the left and four to the right;
and in front was a tiny gold figure of Jesus crucified on a gold
cross.

Christine cast herself down and prayed to the painted image and the
hammered heart. She prayed to the goddess whom the Middle Ages had
perfected and who in the minds of the simple and the savage has
survived the Renaissance and still triumphantly flourishes; the Queen
of heaven, the Tyrant of heaven, the Woman in heaven; who was so
venerated that even her sweat is exhibited as a relic; who was softer
than Christ as Christ was softer than the Father; who in becoming a
goddess had increased her humanity; who put living roses for a sign
into the mouths of fornicators when they died, if only they had been
faithful to her; who told the amorous sacristan to kiss her face and
not her feet; who questioned lovers about their mistresses: "Is she as
pretty as I?"; who fell like a pestilence on the nuptial chambers of
young men who, professing love for her, had taken another bride; who
enjoyed being amused; who admitted a weakness for artists, tumblers,
soldiers and the common herd; who had visibly led both opponents on
every battlefield for centuries; who impersonated absent disreputable
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, w