Under the opposite gallery sat two or three rows of worshipers, who reminded Francesca of Browning’s poem of St. John’s Day at Rome.  For they nudged and jostled each other; they whispered things; they even laughed over the things they whispered.  But they were clad like those in the open part in the Talleth, and they sat book in hand, and from time to time they raised their voices with the congregation.  They showed no reverence except that they did not talk or laugh loudly.  They were like the children, their neighbors,—­just as restless, just as uninterested, just as perfunctory.  Well, they were clearly the poorer and the more ignorant part of the community.  They came here and sat through the service because they were ordered so to do; because, like Passover, and the Feast of Tabernacles, and the Fast of Atonement, it was the Law of their People.

The women in the gallery sat or stood.  They neither knelt nor sang aloud; they only sat when it was proper to sit, or stood when it was proper to stand.  They were like the women, the village women, in a Spanish or Italian church, for whom everything is done.  Francesca, for the moment, felt humiliated that she should be compelled to sit apart from the congregation, railed off in the women’s gallery, to have her religion done for her, without a voice of her own in it at all.  So, I have heard, indignation sometimes fills the bosom of certain ladies when they reflect upon the fact that they are excluded from the choir, and forbidden even to play the organ in their own parish church.

The chanting ceased; the Reader sat down.  Then the Choir began.  They sang a hymn—­a Hebrew hymn—­the rhythm and metre were not English; the music was like nothing that can be heard in a Christian Church.  “It is the music,” said Nelly, “to which the Israelites crossed the Red Sea:”  a bold statement, but—­why not?  If the music is not of Western origin and character, who can disprove such an assertion?  After the hymn the prayers and reading went on again.

There came at last—­it is a long service, such as we poor weak-kneed Anglicans could not endure—­the end.  There was a great bustle and ceremony on the platform; they rolled up the Roll of the Law; they wrapped it in a purple velvet cloth; they hung over it a silver breastplate set with twelve jewels for the Twelve Tribes—­in memory of the Urim and Thummim.  Francesca saw that the upper ends of the staves were adorned with silver pomegranates and with silver bells, and they placed it in the arms of one of those who had been reading the law; then a procession was formed, and they walked, while the Choir sang one of the Psalms of David—­but not in the least like the same Psalm sung in an English Cathedral—­bearing the Roll of the Law to the Ark, that is to say, to the cupboard, behind the railing and inclosure at the east end.

The Reader came back.  Then with another chanted Prayer—­it sounded like a prolonged shout of continued Triumph—­he ended his part of the service.