nd she had thrown ashes on the flame, and set a watch upon
her soul, lest she should mistake an earthly for a heavenly content. She
could not bear to think that she was cheated, that her pulses counted in
her sense of exaltation and beatitude. She desired, purely, the utmost
purity in that divine communion, so as to be sure that it was divine.

Now, having suffered, she was completely sure. Her wound was the seal God
set upon her soul. It was easy enough now for her to achieve detachment,
oblivion of Walter Majendie, to pour out her whole soul in the prayer for
light: "Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee, O Lord, and by Thy great
mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night."

Her hands, as she prayed, were folded close over her eyes. Having
annihilated her husband, she was disagreeably astonished to find that he
was there, that he had been there for some time, in the seat beside her.

He was sitting in what he took to be an attitude of extreme reverence,
his head bowed and resting on his left arm, which was supported by the
back of the seat in front of him. His right arm embraced, unconsciously,
Anne's muff. Anne was vividly, painfully aware of him. Over the crook of
his elbow one eye looked up at her, bright, smiling with inextinguishable
affection. His lips gave out a sound that was not a prayer, but something
between a murmur and a moan, distinctly audible. She felt his gaze as a
gross, tangible thing, as a violent hand, parting the veils of prayer.
She bowed her head lower and pressed her hands to her face till the blood
tingled.

The sermon obliged her to sit upright and exposed. It gave him
iniquitous opportunity. He turned in his seat; his eyes watched her under
half-closed lids, two slits shining through the thick, dark curtain of
their lashes. He kept on pulling at his moustache, as if to hide the dumb
but expressive adoration of his mouth. Anne, who felt that her soul had
been overtaken, trapped, and bared to the outrage, removed herself by a
yard's length till the hymn brought them together, linked by the book she
could not withhold. The music penetrated her soul and healed its hurt.

"Christian, doth thou see them,
On the holy ground,
How the troops of Midian
Prowl and prowl around?"

sang Anne in a dulcet pianissimo, obedient to the choir.

Profound abstraction veiled him, a treacherous unspiritual calm. Majendie
was a man with a baritone voice, which at times posse