WHITEWASH
shaped paper, stamped with the images of St. Anne and the Virgin. As the lights shone through the mellow translucence of the parchment, they seemed a sudden florescence of myriad calla lilies of miraculous radiance. Through the door of the chapel, into the open starlit night, the pilgrims poured, the procession carrying her along with it. She disengaged herself for a moment, and rather shamefacedly purchased a candle, and begged a light from her neighbor, a tottering old woman, the white bands of whose coif were hardly less pale than the face they framed.
The waiting seemed endless in the crowded night, filled with snatches of hymns and songs. All was swaying life and excited unrest except the quiet, unmoved stars overhead. Then the vast illuminated procession heaved under way. Once more the chant that had brought the pilgrims to their journey's end in the afternoon burst forth, both from the candle-bearers and the dense black human hedge that lined the route.
Gradually the exaltation of Victoria's mood faded. In its place the artist and the journalist
