oriously drawn out and painfully picked apart by a watchful deacon.

The dry, monotonous disturbance of the bell had given way to the strain
of a bass viol, that had been apparently pitched to the key of the east
wind without, and the crude complaint of a new harmonium that seemed to
bewail its limited prospect of ever becoming seasoned or mellowed in its
earthly tabernacle, and then the singing began. Here and there a human
voice soared and struggled above the narrow text and the monotonous
cadence with a cry of individual longing, but was borne down by the
dull, trampling precision of the others' formal chant. This and
a certain muffled raking of the stove by the sexton brought the
temperature down still lower. A sermon, in keeping with the previous
performance, in which the chill east wind of doctrine was not tempered
to any shorn lamb within that dreary fold, followed. A spark of human
and vulgar interest was momentarily kindled by the collection and the
simultaneous movement of reluctant hands towards their owners' pockets;
but the coins fell on the baize-covered plates with a dull thud, like
clods on a coffin, and the dreariness returned. Then there was another
hymn and a prolonged moan from the harmonium, to which mysterious
suggestion the congregation rose and began slowly to file into the
aisle. For a moment they mingled; there was the silent grasping of damp
woollen mittens and cold black gloves, and the whispered interchange
of each other's names with the prefix of "Brother" or "Sister," and
an utter absence of fraternal geniality, and then the meeting slowly
dispersed.

The few who had waited until the minister had resumed his hat, overcoat,
and overshoes, and accompanied him to the door, had already passed out;
the sexton was turning out the flickering gas jets one by one, when the
cold and austere silence was broken by a sound--the unmistakable echo of
a kiss of human passion.

As the horror-stricken official turned angrily, the figure of a man
glided from the shadow of the stairs below the organ loft, and vanished
through the open door. Before the sexton could follow, the figure of a
woman slipped out of the same portal and with a hurried glance after the
first retreating figure, turned in the opposite direction and was lost
in the darkness. By the time the indignant and scandalized custodian had
reached the portal, they had both melted in the troubled sea of
tossing umbrellas already to the right and l