A little lamp, burning with a motionless light like a carbuncle, was laid at the Mother’s feet. About her shoulders, suspended from the neighbouring walls, were a half-dozen certificates of _miracles approuvés_--decorated placards recording the processes and dates, some of them quite recent, of extraordinary recoveries. One of these related how to a Marie Cornelis was restored the sight of an eye that had been skewered by a thorn. Faith here had at least made its appeal in a sure direction. Who could forget how that other woman had worn a crown of thorns about her heart? Now the gazer would have liked to know what manifestation of the supernatural was craved by the young girl, fair and quiet as the image itself, who knelt before the shrine. She, this _dévote_, reverencing, with her mouth pressed to the clasped knuckles of her hands, had so much of the Madonna in her own appearance as to suggest that she might perform, rather than demand, miracles. Her eyes--Ned fancied, but could not convince himself--were closed, as in a rapture of piety. She was very pure and colourless, apart from an accidentalism of tinted rays; for over her soft brown hair, from which a folded chaperon of white linen had slipped backwards, wings of parti-coloured light, entering through a stained window, played like butterflies. Lower down, the violet haze that slept upon her cheek gave her something of a phantasmal character; but her fingers were steeped in crimson as if they were bloody. At her side knelt a little lad, five or six years of age, with a most wistful small face expressive of as great a humility of weariness as the girl’s was of worship. He looked at the stranger with curiosity, and with the dumb appeal of the petty to the great and independent; and as he looked he lifted, one after the other, his poor chafed knees and rubbed them. His round, pale eyes were underscored for emphasis of this appeal, but without effect on Mr Murk, who had indeed no fondness for children. Presently the girl rose. With the action the wings of light fled from her hair; her passionless face revealed itself a sunless white fruit. There was no consciousness of the observant stranger under her lowered lids. “_Viens, donc, Baptiste_!” she whispered; and the little boy, gazing up at her in a breathless manner, got to his feet. The two genuflected to the High Altar, and stole reverently from the building. Mr Murk followed immediately. He had a desire to win into the confidence of this butterfly Madonna. Outside he saw the girl and child go down into the blazing market as into a lake of fire. Giving them fair law, he started in pursuit.