After a short pause she walked down the aisle and sat down in the
second row of seats.
The priest came out as she took her place, and the Mass began.
Its very silence was restful to the girl, and as she watched, the sleep
that had refused to come to her all through the night touched her
eyelids and they closed wearily.
When she opened them it was as if a cool hand had been laid on her
aching heart. Here was peace.
The Good Shepherd in the round window seemed to mean much as he looked
down at her, and even the statue of the Mother and Child in the altar to
her left looked beautiful to her. "Salve Regina, Mater Misericordiae,"
she read.
To the right of the main altar a group of tiny votive candles were
burning; an old nun in a kind of white sunbonnet, draped with a black
gauze veil, dropped her rosary with a little clatter to the wooden
floor.
There were only a dozen or so people in the church, but this made no
difference. The priest would not feel slighted, as an Anglican curate
might. He had a serious ascetic face, and seemed not to know that any
was present beside his God and himself.
"I am a brute," Brigit told herself, "a perfect fiend to torture him so.
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