t rang out overhead.

"Couldest thou not watch one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into
temptation. The spirit indeed is ready, but the flesh is weak."

It was coming near to Isabel's turn; the Carringtons already were
beginning to move; and in a moment or two she rose and followed them out.
The people were pressing up the aisles; and as she stood waiting her turn
to pass into the white-hung seat, she could not help noticing the
disorder that prevailed; some knelt devoutly, some stood, some sat to
receive the sacred elements; and all the while louder and louder, above
the rustling and the loud whispering of the ministers and the shuffling
of feet, the tale rose and fell on the cadences of the preacher's voice.
Now it was her turn; she was kneeling with palms outstretched and closed
eyes. Ah! would he not be silent for one moment? Could not the reality
speak for itself, and its interpreter be still? Surely the King of Love
needed no herald when Himself was here.

"And anon in the dawning, the high Priests held a Council with Elders and
the Scribes and the whole Council, and bound Jesus and led Him away." ...

And so it was over presently, and she was back again in her seat,
distracted and miserable; trying to pray, forcing herself to attend now
to the reader, now to her Saviour with whom she believed herself in
intimate union, and finding nothing but dryness and distraction
everywhere. How interminable it was! She opened her eyes, and what she
saw amazed and absorbed her for a few moments; some were sitting back and
talking; some looking cheerfully about them as if at a public
entertainment; one man especially overwhelmed her imagination; with a
great red face and neck like a butcher, animal and brutal, with a heavy
hanging jowl and little narrow lack-lustre eyes--how bored and depressed
he was by this long obligatory ceremony! Then once more she closed her
eyes in self-reproach at her distractions; here were her lips still
fragrant with the Wine of God, the pressure of her Beloved's arm still
about her; and these were her thoughts, settling like flies, on
everything....

When she opened them again the last footsteps were passing down the
aisle, the dripping Cups were being replaced by the ministers, and
covered with napkins, and the tale of Easter was in telling from the
pulpit like the promise of a brighter day.

"And they said one to another, Who shall roll us away the stone from the
door of the sepulchr