Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/34

 Shrines. Come along. It's rather picturesque. A variant on Velasquez's ''Les Lanzas. ' ''

Reluctantly Jill followed him round to the high grille which yielded to his thrust.

They found themselves in a gravelled, orderly necropolis, a Galerie Lafayette, a Bon Marche of death. It seemed almost to display counters and to advertise good worth for the money. The poorer graves were sheltered by the high-perched tin tabernacles; the more opulent by stone chapels, railed across the front and displaying with sociable complacency their funereal altars, tablets, photographs, bead-wreaths, and vases filled with artificial flowers. There were streets of them, standing face to face. Some were solid and some were flimsy, but they all expressed the conviction that they were doing the right thing in the right way.

'It's like the gentleman with a ribbon across his chest who gets up, in evening clothes, and in broad daylight, at a French function, to make a speech,' Graham observed, sardonically gratified by a new experience. 'It civilizes death, you see, Jill; classifies it and introduces it to society. The tubs look industrial rather than rural, and are an invention, I expect, of the people who work in the quarries down the river.'

'I never imagined anything so horrible,' said Jill, standing to look from side to side with a dismay almost indignant. 'It will haunt my dreams.'

The cemetery was not all reclaimed from nature and dedicated to horror. In one corner—Jill observed it from where she stood—a broad space of grass still