Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/291

 brought us physically nearer together. Cornelia seldom takes anyone's arm; she likes to be free when she walks. But, in the obscurity, our swinging hands occasionally brushed at our sides, with an effect—a mutual effect, I believe—of merely instinctive or "animal" sympathy, which, in me, was instantly heightened into a kind of aching tenderness. At the same time I was conscious that our minds—what we call our minds—had been moving at a widening distance. And now shafts of light from the windows of Santo Espiritu cut across the path, and as we neared the gate, we stepped into the soft radiant glow of the place, and the color in the bluebird gown lived again. We hesitated, then stopped, and a momentary silence fell on us once more. I pulled the crushed and wilted heliotrope from my buttonhole, and inhaled the faint fragrance, meant for my "time of day." Then I said, with my ultimate effort:—

"Cornelia, when one goes out at the church door, one enters the universe. The only blessed mood that I know comes when I feel that all the universe is holy. And a sacrament, as I understand it, makes not merely the difference between a house and a church; it makes also the difference between a house and a home. When the world is before one,