The organ played softly and the changing tones mingled with the blue
wreaths that ascended from the sanctuary in a fragrant cloud, lingering
over the congregation. The celebrant offered the bread and wine to Our
Father in Heaven. And all this took time; the children were tired by
their tense concentration; their prayers had all been said two and three
times over; and they were now vacantly waiting and longing, looking at
their clothes, at the stained-glass windows in the choir or St. Anne in
her crimson cloak, or counting the stars that were painted high up on the
stone ceiling.

The altar-bell tinkled twice and thrice in succession; the _Sanctus_ was
sung; and after that the organ was silenced. A hush fell over the
congregation and all heads dropped, as though mown down, in deep
reverence: not one dared look up. The priest genuflected, the bell
sounded repeatedly and, amid that great hush, thrice three notes of the
great church-bell droned through the church and rang out over the distant
fields. Outside, it was all blue and sunshine and silence; everything was
bowed in anxious expectation; it was as though there were nothing erect
and alive in the world except that little church and that bell. In the
farthest houses in the village the mothers were now kneeling and beating
their breasts, with their thoughts on Our Lord. The God of Heaven and
Earth had descended and was filling all things with His awful presence.
Carefully, slowly, almost timidly came the _Adoro te_; and the people
little by little raised their heads and sighed, as though relieved and
still quite awed by what had happened or was going to happen.

And now the ceremony began. After the _Agnus Dei_ and the three tinkles
of the bell at the _Domine, non sum dignus_, the four little angels came
with hands folded and heads bowed, with their gold-paper wings carefully