A few sightseers were wandering about the edifice; an occasional penitent occupied a chapel with lips close to the grating, on the other side of which was the ear of the absolver; in the body of the church a number knelt in prayer.
He looked at these things with curiosity, not unmingled with scorn. His attention was attracted by a plainly dressed woman standing in a side aisle; to his surprise, he recognized his wife.
She did not see him as he softly approached her. A sunbeam breaking through the clouds outside shone through a window and lit up her face, displaying to him a new expression, a look of yearning and of love which beautified it; a look he had never seen before; he recognized the fact with a vague sense of pain.
That which he saw, like that which he felt, was but momentary. She turned, looking at him at first with an abstracted gaze, then startled, as though waking from a dream. "Leonard!" she exclaimed in a low voice. It sounded like fear.
"Even so, my dear. Why are you here alone?"
"I—I—don't know. I was tired."
"Has this spectacle moved you so?" He pointed to the worshippers.
"No, not that. I wish I were as good as they; I have watched them often."
"Often?" he repeated. He was somewhat indignant at that wish, that she, his wife, were as good as these idolaters; but it was plain that she was deeply moved by something, and he was very tender. "Do you come here often?"
"I have done so, Leonard." There was humility in her tone, there was confession; had he known it, there was a cry for aid.