As her magnificent voice rose and rolled to the arched roof, people forgot propriety, and turned to look at the singer.  She saw Mrs. Murray start and glance eagerly up at her, and for an instant the grand, pure voice faltered slightly, as Edna noticed that the mother whispered something to the son.  But he did not turn his proud head, he only leaned his elbow on the side of the pew next to the aisle, and rested his temple on his hand.

When the preliminary services ended, and the minister stood up in the shining pulpit and commenced his discourse, Edna felt that St. Elmo had at last enlisted angels in his behalf; for the text was contained in the warning, whose gilded letters hid the blood-spot, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”

As far as two among his auditory were concerned, the preacher might as well have addressed his sermon to the mossy slabs, visible through the windows.  Both listened to the text, and neither heard any more.  Edna sat looking down at Mr. Murray’s massive, finely-poised head, and she could see the profile contour of features, regular and dark, as if carved and bronzed.

During the next half-hour her vivid imagination sketched and painted a vision of enchantment—­of what might have been, if that motionless man below, there in the crimson-cushioned pew, had only kept his soul from grievous sins.  A vision of a happy, proud, young wife reigning at Le Bocage, shedding the warm, rosy light of her love over the lonely life of its master; adding to his strong, clear intellect and ripe experience, the silver flame of her genius; borrowing from him broader and more profound views of her race, on which to base her ideal aesthetic structures; softening, refining his nature, strengthening her own; helping him to help humanity; loving all good, being good, doing good; serving and worshipping God together; walking hand and hand with her husband through earth’s wide valley of Baca, with peaceful faces full of faith, looking heavenward.

  “God pity them both! and pity us all,
   Who vainly the dreams of youth recall. 
   For of all sad words of tongue or pen
   The saddest are these, ‘It might have been!’”

At last, with a faint moan, which reached no ear but that of Him who never slumbers, Edna withdrew her eyes from the spot where Mr. Murray sat, and raised them toward the pale Christ, whose wan lips seemed to murmur: 

“Be of good cheer!  He that overcometh shall inherit all things.  What I do, thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter.”

The minister, standing beneath the picture of the Master whom he served, closed the Bible and ended his discourse by hurling his text as a thunderbolt at those whose upturned faces watched him: 

“Finally, brethren, remember under all circumstances the awful admonition of Jesus, ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged!’”

The organ peals and the doxology were concluded; the benediction fell like God’s dew, alike on sinner and on saint, and amid the solemn moaning of the gilded pipes, the congregation turned to quit the church.