pathetically united and well-disposed towards each other.  As if the prayer were a torch applied to fuel, a smoke seemed to rise automatically and fill the place with the ghosts of innumerable services on innumerable Sunday mornings at home.  Susan Warrington in particular was conscious of the sweetest sense of sisterhood, as she covered her face with her hands and saw slips of bent backs through the chinks between her fingers.  Her emotions rose calmly and evenly, approving of herself and of life at the same time.  It was all so quiet and so good.  But having created this peaceful atmosphere Mr. Bax suddenly turned the page and read a psalm.  Though he read it with no change of voice the mood was broken.

“Be merciful unto me, O God,” he read, “for man goeth about to devour me:  he is daily fighting and troubling me. . . .  They daily mistake my words:  all that they imagine is to do me evil.  They hold all together and keep themselves close. . . .  Break their teeth, O God, in their mouths; smite the jaw-bones of the lions, O Lord:  let them fall away like water that runneth apace; and when they shoot their arrows let them be rooted out.”

Nothing in Susan’s experience at all corresponded with this, and as she had no love of language she had long ceased to attend to such remarks, although she followed them with the same kind of mechanical respect with which she heard many of Lear’s speeches read aloud.  Her mind was still serene and really occupied with praise of her own nature and praise of God, that is of the solemn and satisfactory order of the world.

But it could be seen from a glance at their faces that most of the others, the men in particular, felt the inconvenience of the sudden intrusion of this old savage.  They looked more secular and critical as then listened to the ravings of the old black man with a cloth round his loins cursing with vehement gesture by a camp-fire in the desert.  After that there was a general sound of pages being turned as if they were in class, and then they read a little bit of the Old Testament about making a well, very much as school boys translate an easy passage from the Anabasis when they have shut up their French grammar.  Then they returned to the New Testament and the sad and beautiful figure of Christ.  While Christ spoke they made another effort to fit his interpretation of life upon the lives they lived, but as they were all very different, some practical, some ambitious, some stupid, some wild and experimental, some in love, and others long past any feeling except a feeling of comfort, they did very different things with the words of Christ.

From their faces it seemed that for the most part they made no effort at all, and, recumbent as it were, accepted the ideas the words gave as representing goodness, in the same way, no doubt, as one of those industrious needlewomen had accepted the bright ugly pattern on her mat as beauty.