There rose in her heart a great
vague hunger for gregarious worship--the sort which all these others had
freely offered every week of all their lives--that same wish for
gregarious worship on which are based all the churches, all the creeds,
of all the world. As never in her life before Aurora felt now that she
could no longer fight alone, in solitude--she needed something--she
needed the sight of other faces, the touch of other hearts; needed the
assemblage, the crowd--needed, in short, the world _en masse_, as we all
do. She had lived without association and without sympathy too long. Now
her starved nature at last rebelled.

So, having prayed faithfully, Aurora Lane rose not wholly comforted; and
therefore she resolved to break the habit of her life, as she had lived
it more than twenty years in this little town. In all that time she had
not been within the door of any church, but now she felt that she must
go--must be at least in part like to all these others on this evening of
the Sabbath day.

The main note of such a community as Spring Valley is that of a resigned
acceptance of life. This means a drab middle course, of small heroics,
which yet does not debar from a quiet sympathy and mutual understanding.
This in turn essentially implies some manner of religious belief, for
the most part of the passive, un-investigative sort. Without doubt the
church of this or that denomination--and in any such community there
will be many--is the club and the court alike to those who maintain its
beliefs--aye, and it is their hope and stay as well.

Aurora chose the largest church, where there was most apt to be the
largest congregation. Passing there, she had heard the organ roll in its
moving appeal. It seemed to her that she must hear music or she must
starve, must die. The drain on her nature now had been so great that,
much as every impulse drew her to yonder other edifice, the one with
iron bars where lay her own son, a prisoner, she could not go there,
could not see him again, until she herself had had restoration of some
of the forces of her own life. She wanted music--she wanted light--she
wanted the presence, close, near to her, of other human beings. Surely
they must know--surely they too must some time have suffered, have
grieved, have yearned.

The slow life of the little town, which the excitement of this
extraordinary Sabbath had so largely diverted from its usual channels,
now began to reassemble and to tri