good. I looked
at the slattern-formed men and women sitting in still rows across the
little church, with their faces lit like candles from the preacher's
face, and I experienced a peaceful remoteness from them and from the
pulpit light.

CHAPTER XVII

BACK AGAIN TO THE WORLD

The carnal man never dies in us, nor the carnal woman, either, for that
matter. We only say so in our prayers and rituals because we do not
know yet how to be spiritually truthful about our own flesh and blood.
But God, who knew very well what He was about when He made us carnal,
sees to it that in spite of our egregious pretensions we remain honest
Adams and Adamesses to the end. So, for years, without acknowledging
it to myself, I had been homesick for the world and the things of the
world. I did not want to "sin," I simply longed to be natural; to live
a trifle less perpendicularly in my soul. There had been so many
prayer-meeting nights when I would rather have been at the grand opera.
Not that William's prayer-meeting talks were not the very bread of
life--they were; but there is such a thing as losing one's appetite for
just one kind of bread. I have always thought one of the notable
things about the Israelites' journey through the wilderness was the
amazing fortitude with which they accepted their manna diet. Anyhow,
it is not in the power of words to tell how I pined for the real
laughter and lightness and play of life.

William had needed them no less, but the difference was he never knew
it. When he felt world-hungry he thought it was a sign of spiritual
anaemia and prayed for a closer walk with God--as if God was not also
the God of the world even more than He is the caste Deity of any church
or creed. I am not reflecting on William in saying this--I'd sooner
reflect upon one of the Crown Jewels of Heaven, but I am reflecting
upon his understanding. It was not sufficiently earthly--no good
priest's is. Still, I had been his faithful wife for thirty years and
a consistent member of a church which forbids nearly every form of
amusement that cannot be taken at a Sunday-school picnic, a church
festival or at an Epworth League convention.

I did not wait to speak to the people after the sermon, the way a
preacher's wife must do to show her friendliness and interest. I
hurried out and around behind the church to where he lay folded deep
beneath the pine shadows. And there I had it out with him, as
sometimes we had it