"Why except Sundays?" asked Walden, amused.
She gave him a quaint side-glance.
"I'll tell you some day,—not now!"—she answered—"This is not the fitting time or place." She moved to the altar rails, and hung over them, looking at the alabaster sarcophagus "This thing has a perfect fascination for me!" she went on—"I can't bear not to know whose bones are inside! I wonder you haven't opened it."
"It was not meant to be opened by those who closed it," said Walden, quietly.
Cicely drooped her gipsy-bright eyes.
"That's one for me!" she thought—"He's just like what Maryllia says he is,—very certain of his own mind, and not likely to move out of his own way."
"I think," pursued Walden—"if you knew that someone very dear to you had been laid in that sarcophagus 'to eternal rest,' you would resent any disturbance of even the mere dust of what was once life,- -would you not?"
"I might;" said Cicely dubiously—"But I have never had any 'someone very dear to me' except Maryllia Vancourt. And if she died, I should die too!"
John was silent, but he looked at her with increased interest and kindliness.
They walked out of the church together, and once in the open air, he became politely conventional.