“No, no, dear mother! there were no arguments, no efforts. The Sisters treated me with the kindest courtesy, while they seemed to shun, rather than to desire, to discuss the difference of creed. I gathered at the most that I was pitied for having missed a great good, a signal blessing, an unspeakable privilege; that had fallen to their more happy lot. And when I have seen the Sisters’ faces as they came from their early, daily Communion, and when I have seen the little children—the tiniest creatures—fed with the Bread of Life, in which I might not share——”
She broke off. The sick woman said reproachfully:
“Had you not the privileges of your own reformed faith? Could you not have attended the monthly Communion at some French Protestant church, to your spiritual profit and refreshment?”
“Without doubt,” was the reply, “if I had needed nothing more than these.”
“Then.... You bewilder me, Ada! What can you find lacking in the services of your Church?”
She said, slowly and thoughtfully:
“What?... I have thought and reflected much upon this question, and I have decided that the coldness and narrowness that have chilled my soul, and the aching sense of something being wanting, arise from the lack of belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, and in the deliberate, purposeful absence of love, and honor, and worship towards His Mother——”
She was interrupted by an outcry of feeble vehemence.
“You horrify me, Ada. Worship towards a created being!... A sinful vessel of common human clay!”
She rose and said, standing beside the pillow, with the light of dawn upon her hair: