"Oh no!" she answered; then she added, with a blush, "I only want to thank God that we are here—together." "Right you are!" said Joe heartily, but he did not offer to kneel with her. She moved from him slowly, with a backward glance, which escaped his notice, and knelt behind a pillar, covering her face with her hands, wondering at first what her mother would say if she could see her, and almost tremblingly glad that she couldn’t. Oddly enough, when she began to pray it never occurred to her to use the old familiar forms. She thanked God because He had made her happy; she entreated a continuance of that happiness in her own artless words, words she might have used to her mother. When her prayer was ended, she became conscious of the strange intimacy of her invocation. She felt a glow, although a minute previously the lower temperature of the Cathedral after the warm sunshine without had struck her chillingly. When she rose from her knees, her eyes were shining. She returned to her husband, who said: "Regular mix-up we have here. Let’s skin out of it." *II* They travelled by easy stages to Treguier, their destination, stopping overnight at Saint Brieux and Guingamp. By the luck of things they happened to reach Treguier at the time of the great Pardon, _le Pardon des Pauvres_, the Pardon of Brittany’s greatest and most potent Saint—_Yves de la Vérité_. Everything also combined to make this new experience an imperishable memory. Their hotel in Treguier was charmingly clean and comfortable, an inn of the olden time kept by two elderly spinsters. It overlooked the river Jaudy flowing placidly to the sea. Beyond, under soft skies, lay the Breton landscape, quietly pastoral, pleasingly undulating, with a thin mist revealing rather than obscuring its beauty. Susan woke early, hearing the sound of sabots upon the quay, and the tinkle of bells upon the horses. She went to the open window and looked out. Already the town was full of pilgrims, peasants in the costume of the country, all chattering and gesticulating. Some had come in boats. Susan marked the whiteness of the women’s coifs and the stout cloth of their gowns. When they laughed, she saw rows of white teeth; their faces were superbly tanned by sun and wind; they looked what they were—the sisters, the wives, the mothers of strong men. Amongst them, terribly conspicuous wandered a few beggars, disease-stricken wretches importuning alms of the healthy, pointing shrivelled, dirty hands at their dreadful sores, advertising, almost triumphantly, their poverty and misery. Susan had learned from the two sisters that this was the fête of the ver poor, she had been warned to expect a parade of misery and deformity, and Mademoiselle Yannik had added softly, "Look you, madame, it is good, when one is young and strong and happy, to look sometimes at these _misérables_." *III*