'Do you think we ought to have kissed it?' Marcia inquired. 'I would have done it, only I didn't know how.'
Paul laughed. 'He knew we weren't of the true faith. No right-minded Catholic would laugh at nearly spilling a cardinal in the street.'
They stood aside by the central door looking for Mrs. Royston and Eleanor and watching the crowd surge past. Paul was quite insistent that they should go in without the others, but Marcia was equally insistent that they wait. She had an intuitive feeling that there was safety in numbers.
For a wonder they presently espied Mrs. Royston bearing down upon them, a small camp-stool clutched to her portly bosom, and Eleanor panting along behind, a camp-stool in either hand.
Mrs. Royston caught sight of them with an expression of relief.
'My dears, I was afraid I had lost you,' she gasped. 'We remembered, just as we got to the bridge, that we hadn't brought any chairs, and so we went back for them. Paul, you should have thought of them yourself. I suppose we'd better hurry in and get a good place.'
Paul patiently possessed himself of the chairs and followed the ladies, with a glance at Marcia which seemed to say, 'Is there this day living a more exemplary nephew and gentleman than I?'
The tenebræ service on Holy Thursday is the one time in the year when St. Peter's may be seen at night. The great church looms vaster and emptier and more solemn then than at any other time. The eye cannot penetrate to the distant dome hidden in shadows. The long nave stretches interminably into space, the chapels deepen and broaden until they are churches themselves. The clustered pillars reach upward till they are lost in the darkness. What the eye cannot grasp the imagination seizes upon, and the vast interior grows and widens until it seems to stretch out arms to inclose all Christendom itself. On this one night it does inclose all Rome--nobility and peasants, Italians and foreigners: those who are of the faith, and those who are merely spectators; those who come to worship; those who come to be amused--St. Peter's receives them all with the same impartiality.
Standing outside, it had seemed to them that the whole city had flowed through the doors; but within, the church was still approximately empty. As they walked down the broad nave in the dimness of twilight, Marcia turned to the young man beside her.