She could not think; she must think. That was it; she must think. Never before had she felt the need of thinking, but there was something that she must think out. What it was, or why she must think about it, she could not tell, but the immediate, pressing necessity was to think; she must find a place to think in. Not her own room at Mrs. Wallace’s; she would not go there. The park? That might do, though she would like to go where no one could come near her, and the park would be full of strollers on such a Sunday as this. Solitude, a place to think, to gather up vague horrors which were lurking at the back of her brain, waiting to be assembled into definite agony. Cis dimly felt that agony was upon her, beginning, yet almost it would be better than this strange bewilderment which held for her but two cogent impressions. They rose up out of her chaos like spars of a shipwreck: Someone, Rodney Moore--but she could not quite grasp who Rodney Moore was, why his affairs affected her--had a living wife. And she must find solitude and think; there was something that she must clearly see, upon which she must decide. She turned the corner of a street, going on aimlessly. The church had not occurred to her as a quiet place in which she could think, still less did it occur to poor Cicely, who had few of the habits of devotion, to seek the church for enlightenment, guidance, strength. She had never formed the custom of making visits to the church, so now, bewildered, benumbed, there was no deep-seated instinct to lead her thither when her brain was not directing her steps. Yet before her, as she came down this street into which she had turned, stood the church of St. Francis Xavier, the church to which she repaired nearly every week for her compulsory Mass of Sunday. “That ought to be a quiet place,” Cis told herself, and ascended the church steps. It was a large church, fine in architecture, not tasteful in decoration. It was much too strong-colored, too bizarre in the designs of its interior, yet it contrived to get an effect of splendor, in spite of its offenses against the canons of art, and it needed no contriving to give an instant sense of cheerfulness, of homelikeness, of kindness, and, withal, of devotion to those who entered it. There were but few people in it at this hour, when dinner and the companionship of the weekly holiday occupied most of its frequenters. Those who were there were kneeling at the farther end of the deep building, before the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes, or the Sacred Heart altar, or before the Pietà that stood near the sanctuary rail, just within it. A half dozen, or less, knelt before the candelabrum which held the votive candles; they had each lighted one, and were praying raptly that the boon which they implored by whispered prayer and representative little candle might be granted.