ness and power invincible; care for the helpless, strength to shelter it from every harm. The great, calm eyes told their story, the parted lips were whispering some tale of hope, sure and immortal; the raised hand revealed whence that hope arose. All love seemed to be concentrated in the brooding figure, so human, yet so celestial; all heaven seemed to lie an open path before those quivering wings. And see, the arching instep, the upward-springing foot, suggested that thither those wings were bound, bearing their God-given burden far from the horror of the earth, deep into the bosom of a changeless rest above.
The statue was only that of an affrighted child in its mother's arms; its interpretation made clear even to the dullest by the simple symbolism of some genius—Humanity saved by the Divine.
While we gazed at its enchanting beauty, the priests and priestesses, filing away to right and left, arranged themselves alternately, first a man and then a woman, within the ring of the columns of fire that burned around the loop-shaped shrine. So great was its circumference that the whole hundred of them must stand wide apart one from another, and, to our sight, resembled little lonely children clad in gleaming garments, while their chant of worship reached us only like echoes thrown from a far precipice. In short, the effect of this holy shrine and its occupants was superb yet overwhelming, at least I know that it filled me with a feeling akin to fear.
Oros waited till the last priest had reached his appointed place. Then he turned and said, in his gentle, reverent tones—
Draw nigh, now, O Wanderers well-beloved, and give greeting to the Mother,
and he pointed towards the statue.
Where is she?
asked Leo, in a whisper, for here we scarcely dared to speak aloud. I see no one.
The Hesea dwells yonder,
he answered, and, taking each of us by the hand, he led us forward across the great emptiness of the apse to the altar at its head.
