"The great argument in favor of the Church seems to me," Sylvia thought, "that it measures humanity by the weakest and not by the strongest link, which of course means that it never overestimates its power and survives assaults that shatter more ambitious and progressive organizations of human belief. Well, Queenie is a weak enough link, and I sha'n't feel happy until I have secured her incorporation first into the Church, and, secondly—I suppose into the state. Yet why should I want to give her nationality? What is the aim of a state? Material comfort, really—nothing else. I'm tempted to give her to the Church, but deny her to the state. Alas! it's a material world, and it's not going to be spiritualized by me. The devil was sick, etc. No doubt at present everything promises well for a spiritual revival after this orgy of insane destructiveness. But history with its mania for repetition isn't encouraging about the results of war. As a matter of fact, I've got no right to talk about the war at present. I choked and spluttered for a while in some of its vile back-wash, and Bucharest hasn't managed to get the taste out of my mouth. Queenie," she said, aloud, "you know that during these last weeks I've been going to church regularly?"
Queenie extricated herself from whatever path she was following in her pictures and looked at Sylvia with blue eyes that were intensely willing to believe anything her friend told her.
"I knew you were always going out," she said. "But I thought it was to see a boy."
"Great heavens! child, do you seriously think that I should so much object to men's getting hold of you if I were doing the same thing myself in secret? Haven't you yet realized that I can't do things in secret?"
"Don't be cross with me again. I think you are cross, yes?"
Sylvia shook her head. "What I want to know is: did you ever go to church in your life, and if you did do you ever think about wanting to go again?"
"I was going to church with my mother when I was four; my stepmother was never going to church, and so I was never going myself until two years ago at Christmas. There was a girl who asked me to go with her, and it was so sweet. We looked at all the dolls, and there was a cow, but some woman said, quite loudly: 'Well, if this is the sort of women we was meeting on Christmas night, I'm glad Christmas only comes once in the year.' My friend with me was very maquillée. Too much paint she was having, really, and she said to this woman such rude things, and a man came and was asking us to move along farther. And then outside my friend sat down on the steps and cried and cried. Ach, it was dreadful! She was making a scene. So I was not going more to church, because I was always remembering this and being unhappy."
On the next day Sylvia took Queenie to the mission church and introduced her to the priest; afterward they often went to Mass together. It was like taking a child; Queenie asked the reason of every ceremony, and Sylvia, who had never bothered her head with ceremonies, began to wish she had never exposed herself to so many unanswerable questions. It seemed to her that she had given Queenie nothing except another shadowy land in which her vague mind would wander without direction; but the priest was more hopeful, and undertook to give her instruction so that she might be confirmed presently. When the question was gone into, there was no doubt that she had been baptized, for by some freak of memory she was able to show that she understood the reason of her being called Concetta from being born on the 8th of December. However, the revelation of her true name to the priest gave Queenie a horror of his company, and nothing would induce her to go near him again, or even to enter the church.
"This was going to bring me bad luck," she told Sylvia. "That name! that name! How was you so unkind to tell him that name?"
Sylvia was distressed by the thought of the fear she had roused and explained the circumstances to the priest, who, rather to her irritation, seemed inclined to resort placidly to prayer.