Müllerstrasse lay somewhere in an extreme northerly direction; it was in "Franz-Josef Land," the owner of a fruit and vegetable stall, of whom she made inquiries, informed her. The way led through a network of narrow streets, from one electric tram to another, past the Reichstag buildings, the Lessing Theatre, along an interminable tree-flanked road; and beyond the Weddingplatz, which Berliners regard as the end of everywhere, the Müllerstrasse began.
No one seemed to have heard of a chapel dedicated to St. Joseph, not even people who lived in the neighbourhood. At last someone she asked said he thought there was a Catholic place up there in a yard, and after a little further exploration she found what she sought. It was a low iron building shaped like a shovel, between flowering shrubs, with high tenements surrounding it. The side door was open, and garlands of pine bid her "Welcome." She entered a plain whitewashed hall, filled with the odour of incense, laurel, and new pinewood. In the background was an alcove decorated to resemble a starry canopy. Behind the wooden balustrade that separated the pictureless chancel from the rest of the building rose two magnificent feathery palms. The low rolling tones of an organ proceeded from the loft; the organist had probably lingered behind after the funeral to improvise dreamily at the instrument.
Lilly's eyes wandered anxiously over the walls in quest of the shrine of her saint. She wondered if he held up his finger here in smiling warning, as did the kind old gentleman of St. Ann's in her native town.
There was no room for side altars, as every inch of space was filled with benches. But that big picture over there in tawdry gilt frame, with a console-table beneath piled with dusty nosegays, was that----? She started back, shocked. Her saint, her own dear beloved saint was simply absurd, with his sharp-featured, wax-doll's face, his flaxen beard and seraphically pious smile. An infant Jesus in pink sat triumphal on one arm, while in his other hand he daintily clasped a spray of lilies. And pity succeeded her horror. How far behind her, how infinitely far away, was the time when one could worship and pray for miracles to a saint like this!
Could her good, faithful monitor in St. Ann's have been like this? She hardly dared think of such a thing. He couldn't; no, he couldn't have been so insipid and ridiculous. One place on earth must remain to which one's memory in hours of smiling pensive melancholy might return on holy pilgrimages. The organ began the prelude to an exquisite mass of Scarlatti's with which Lilly had been familiar in her girlhood, and so gradually she became more at home in the little chapel.
She knelt on a bench at the back, shut her eyes, and tried to fancy that instead of this flaxen-haired caricature her real old friend was looking down on her.
A saying of St. Thomas Aquinas came into her head that she had learnt in class when a child: "Other saints have been given the power by God to help us in certain circumstances, but to St. Joseph has been granted the power to help us no matter what our need may be."
Such a power he had once had in her life. So she spoke to him again for the last time across the waste of years that separated her from the altar in St. Ann's. She was sure it would be the last time, because for such childish things there could no longer be room in her soul. And as she felt it was a farewell talk, she related, without reserve, everything that had happened to her: how supremely happy she had become; how she felt an awakening of new life within her, and her dead self blossoming forth afresh, while the whole of creation seemed one great symphony of joy. And she told him, too, of the gross deception she was forced to practise, of her fear of discovery, and of the delicious expectant tremors for which she could find no name.
Then she added that she no longer had any faith in him, and was, to all intents and purposes, an atheist. Feeling reconciled, she placed the carnations she had brought as an offering to the poor saint among the dusty nosegays, and with a lighter heart went out, laughing, to meet the spring that laughed at her.