Often it is only made to disguise her;
sometimes it is made to disfigure her. It may be the masking
of the face as among the Moslems; it may be the shaving of the head
as among the Jews; it may, I believe, be the blackening of the teeth
and other queer expedients among the people of the Far East.
But is never meant to make her look magnificent in public;
and the Bethlehem wife is made to look magnificent in public. She not
only shows all the beauty of her face; and she is often very beautiful.
She also wears a towering erection which is as unmistakably
meant to give her consequence as the triple tiara of the Pope.
A woman wearing such a crown, and wearing it without a veil, does stand,
and can only conceivably stand, for what we call the Western view
of women, but should rather call the Christian view of women.
This is the sort of dignity which must of necessity come from
some vague memory of chivalry. The woman may or may not be,
as the legend says, a lineal descendant of a Crusader.
But whether or no she is his daughter, she is certainly his heiress.
She may be put last among the local figures I have here described,
for the special reason that her case has this rather deeper significance.
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