Zillah asked her how one could get to see the Pope, and the old lady told her it was very difficult. "Ah, those blessed old times before 1870!--ah, the splendid ceremonies in St. Peter's! Do you remember them?" Zillah shook her head. The old lady's assumption of spiritual fellowship made her uneasy. But St. Peter's stuck in her mind. Brum had already told her it was the Pope's house of prayer. Clearly, therefore, it was only necessary to loiter about there with Brum to chance upon him and extort his compassionate withdrawal of the spell of the Evil Eye. With a culminating inspiration she bought a photograph of the Pope, and overcoming the first shock of hereditary repulsion at the sight of the large pendent crucifix at his breast, she studied carefully the Pontiff's face and the Papal robes. Then, when Brum declared himself strong enough to get up, they drove to St. Peter's, the instruction being given quietly to the driver so that Brum should not overhear it. It was the first time Zillah had ever been in a cathedral; and the vastness and glory of it swept over her almost as a reassuring sense of a greater God than she had worshipped in dingy synagogues. She walked about solemnly, leading Brum by the hand, her breast swelling with suppressed sobs of hope. Her eyes roved everywhere, searching for the Pope; but at moments she well-nigh forgot her disappointment at his absence in the wonder and ghostly comfort of the great dim spaces, and the mysterious twinkle of the countless lights before the bronze canopy with its golden-flashing columns. "Where are we, mother?" said Brum at last. "We are waiting for the doctor." "But where?" "In the waiting-room." "It seems very large, mother." "No, I am walking round and round." "There is a strange smell, mother,--I don't know what--something religious." "Oh, nonsense!" She laughed uneasily. "I know what it smells like: cold marble pillars and warm coloured windows." Her blood froze at such uncanny sensibility. "It is the smell of the medicines," she murmured. Somehow his divination made it more difficult to confess to him. "It feels like being in St. Paul's or the Abbey," he persisted, "when I used to shut my eyes to hear the organ better." He had scarcely ceased speaking, when a soft, slow music began to thrill with life the great stone spaces. Brum's grasp tightened convulsively: a light leapt into the blind face. Both came to a standstill, silent. In Zillah's breast rapture made confusion more confounded; and as this pealing grandeur, swelling more passionately, uplifted her high as the mighty Dome, she forgot everything--even the need of explanation to Brum--in this wonderful sense of a Power that could heal, and her Hebrew benediction flowed out into sobbing speech:-- "'Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, who openest the eyes of the blind.'" But Brum had fainted, and hung heavy on her arm. XVII