Rose almost smiled at Fanny’s scared face. “No, Fanny; not literally, at least. Once, though, I did really see it in the very centre of loveliness, and I cannot forget.” “I wish you could forget,” Fanny said pityingly. “I wish we could be little girls once more, Rose.” “No, no!” Rose answered, shuddering. “Not to live all these years over again. But, O Fanny! if I only could forget for ever so short a while!” The strained, wild passion of her look and manner frightened Fanny; she tried to return to her former chatty lightness. “I’ll tell you what you had better do,” she said, “since you are tired of the beautiful. The Catholics are going to keep Ascension Day too. What a queer set they are! Do you know that they call this the month of Mary, and in their hall her image is dressed in lace and flowers, with candles burning around it all day long? It is not so pretty there, I assure you. Suppose you try that.” Then laughing as if she had suggested the most absurd of absurdities, Fanny went away. The dark cloud of depression which had come upon Rose that morning, and had lifted slightly at John’s words, shadowed her now more densely than ever. She looked about the room which John’s taste and hers had made so fair. How everything palled upon her! What good was it to try to make life as beautiful as possible, if even in life she ceased to care for the beautiful? The strong, the true, the lasting, was what she needed now. It seemed to her that there was no hope anywhere. She fled out into the open air, and walked fast to escape her haunting thoughts; but there was no escape from self. Passing the hall where the Catholics had services, she saw an old woman climbing the steps, remembered Fanny’s words, and followed her. “Since the beautiful fails me,” she thought with a bitter smile, “I will look at what is not beautiful.” It was a very dingy hall, and uninviting. On the side walls were poor wood-cuts representing the scenes of the Passion. On a plain white wood altar a lamp was burning. Near by hung a colored print of the Saviour, but as Rose had never seen him portrayed before—with his Heart exposed upon his breast, and great blood-drops falling from it. Rose shrank from the sight; it displeased her. Close by the altar-rail was a highly-colored and gaudily-decorated statue of the Blessed Virgin, with flowers distastefully arranged about it. The old woman had fallen on her knees before it, and was praying. Rose wondered at her. But she was strangely conscious of a peculiar quiet in the place; it soothed her. She sat down on one of the benches, and took up a book lying there. _The Key of Heaven_ it was called; a very soiled and worn book it was; she hardly liked to touch it. It opened at the Apostles’ Creed. “He ascended into heaven,” she read.