Boys carrying bags were wending their way to school. In some of the sorry shops lights were still burning. Apprentices with ruddy cheeks sweeping the steps stopped at Lilly's approach, and stared, or called to others inside; whereat more youths appeared and all, as if moved by one spring, goggled after her. Marching steps beat a tattoo behind her. A long line of infantry wearing gloves--but no overcoats--came tramping along the middle of the street, puffing clouds of frozen breath in front of them at regular intervals. All turned "eyes left" toward her, as if that had been the word of command, and the officers walking at the side of the line threw one another questioning glances, and shrugged their shoulders. She did not have far to search for the Catholic parish church, which towered above the roofs round about. It was a clumsy stone structure with remnants of Gothic built over and stopped up with bricks. The alcoves along the side aisles were filled with altars barbarously gilded and decorated with cheap garish vases. Her St. Joseph was nowhere to be found. So she contented herself with Our Lady of Sorrows, who, however, did not have much to say to her. An inexplicable feeling of oppression and emptiness seized her, as if she had broken something, she did not know what. She kneeled and mumbled her prayers so unthinkingly that she was ashamed of herself. Then she caught herself ogling her kid gloves which enveloped her fingers with velvety, inconspicuous aristocracy. Every now and then a shiver ran through her body, which forced her to close her eyes and clench her teeth--she was ashamed of the shiver, too. Soon she gave up praying entirely, and regarded Our Lady, who was pulling a doleful face, as if to say: "Do, please, draw this thing out of my body." Yet the seven swords piercing her heart had handles set with pearls and precious gems. "If only I were unhappy," thought Lilly, "I'd have _something_. Then I could carry on a conversation with her, the way I used to with St. Joseph--and the swords in _my_ heart would be sumptuous to behold." As sumptuous as the pearl chain he had put about her neck yesterday at the wedding. She recalled what she had been like two months before, when she had stolen off for half an hour in the grey of early morning to lay her hot, surcharged heart at the feet of her beloved saint--how she had been borne off on clouds by the intoxication of youth, her gaze turned upon the fair and blessed distance. None the less she had been steeped in misery and utter destitution. "If that's the way happiness looks," she went on with her thoughts, and shrugged her shoulders. Suddenly she was beset with fear that those times would never return, that she would have to live on eternally as now, empty-hearted, distraught, tortured by a dull oppression. "This comes of not loving him enough," she confessed to herself. At last she knew what she had to pray for to Our Lady of Sorrows.