cutting word--she knew better than to ask what had happened--and the old
sacristan, lantern in hand and Caesar before him, was making his round of
the galleries, securing doors and windows.

With a shiver of apprehension Alice turned away from the whispering shadows
and went to the Virgin's shrine, where she knelt and tried to pray. The
candles sputtered before her, and she shut her eyes tight, which made
colored patterns come and go behind the lids, fascinating geometrical
figures that changed and faded and grew stronger. And suddenly, inside a
widening green circle, she saw a face, the face of a young man with
laughing gray eyes, and her heart beat with joy. She loved him, she loved
him!--that was her secret and the cause of her unhappiness, for she must
hide her love, especially from him; she must give him some cold word, some
evasive reason, not the real one, when he should come presently for his
answer. Ah, that was the great fact, he was coming for his answer--he, her
hero man, her impetuous American with the name she liked so much, Lloyd
Kittredge--how often she had murmured that name in her lonely hours!--_he_
would be here shortly for his answer.

And alas! she must say "No" to him, she must give him pain; she could not
hope to make him understand--how could anyone understand?--and then,
perhaps, he would misjudge her, perhaps he would leave her in anger and not
come back any more. Not come back any more! The thought cut with a sharp
pang, and in her distress she moved her lips silently in the familiar
prayer printed before her:

O Marie, souvenez vous du moment supreme où Jesus votre divin Fils,
expirant sur la croix, nous confia à votre maternelle solicitude.

Her thoughts wandered from the page and flew back to her lover; Why was he