She looked again across the sea of upturned faces and shook her head. 'Isn't it pitiful?' she asked.
'That priest up there knows he's deluding all these people, and he's just as solemn as if he believed in the relics himself. The church is still so hopelessly mediaeval!'
'That's the beauty of the church,' Paul objected. 'It's still mediaeval, while the rest of the world is so hopelessly nineteenth-century. I like to see these peasants believing in St. Veronica's handkerchief and the power of the sacred Bambino to cure disease. I think it's a beautiful exhibition of faith in a world where faith is out of fashion. I don't blame the priests in the least for keeping it up. It's a protest against the age. They're about the only artists left. If I were a priest I'd learn prestidigitation, and substantiate the efficacy of the relics with a miracle or so.'
'Take their superstition away and you deprive them of their most picturesque quality.'
'You don't care for anything but what's picturesque!' she exclaimed in a tone half scornful.
Paul did not answer. The ceremony was over and the crowd was beginning to pour out. They turned with the stream and wedged their way toward the right-hand entrance, near which their carriages were waiting. Paul manoeuvred very adroitly so that the crowd should separate them from the rest of the party at the door.
'I will tell you what I care for most,' he said in her ear as they pushed out into the portico. 'I care for you.'
She perceived his drift too late and looked back with an air of dismay. The others were lost in the moving mass of heads.
Paul saw her glance and laughed. 'You're going to take good care that we shan't be alone together, aren't you?'
Marcia echoed his laugh. 'Yes,' she acknowledged frankly; 'I'm trying to.'
'It doesn't matter. My time's coming; you can't put it off.' His hand touched hers hanging at her side and he clasped it firmly. 'Come here; we'll get out of this crowd,' and he pushed on outside and drew back into a corner by one of the tall columns. The crowd surged past, flowing down the steps like a river widening to the sea. Below them the piazza was black with a tossing, moving mass of carriages and people. The mass of the Vatican at their left loomed a black bulk in the night, its hundreds of windows shining in the reflected lights of the piazza like the eyes of a great octopus. At another time Marcia might have looked very curiously toward the palace. She might have wondered if in one of those dark windows Leo was not standing brooding over the throng of worshippers who had come that day. How must a pope feel to see thirty thousand people go out from under his roof--go out freely to their homes--while he alone may not step across the threshold? At another time she would have paused to play a little with the thought, but now her attention was engaged. Paul still held her hand.
