r retain
her indignation, until he could speak to her in private, and explain
away a good deal of what she might complain of with some justice.

The church was reached. They all went up the middle aisle into the
Eagle's Crag pew. He followed them in, entered himself, and shut the
door. Ruth's heart sank as she saw him there; just opposite to her;
coming between her and the clergyman who was to read out the Word of
God. It was merciless--it was cruel to haunt her there. She durst
not lift her eyes to the bright eastern light--she could not see how
peacefully the marble images of the dead lay on their tombs, for he
was between her and all Light and Peace. She knew that his look was
on her; that he never turned his glance away. She could not join in
the prayer for the remission of sins while he was there, for his very
presence seemed as a sign that their stain would never be washed out
of her life. But, although goaded and chafed by her thoughts and
recollections, she kept very still. No sign of emotion, no flush of
colour was on her face as he looked at her. Elizabeth could not find
her place, and then Ruth breathed once, long and deeply, as she moved
up the pew, and out of the straight, burning glance of those eyes of
evil meaning. When they sat down for the reading of the first lesson,
Ruth turned the corner of the seat so as no longer to be opposite to
him. She could not listen. The words seemed to be uttered in some
world far away, from which she was exiled and cast out; their sound,
and yet more their meaning, was dim and distant. But in this extreme
tension of mind to hold in her bewildered agony, it so happened that
one of her senses was preternaturally acute. While all the church
and the people swam in misty haze, one point in a dark corner grew
clearer and clearer till she saw (what at another time she could not
have discerned at all) a face--a gargoyle I think they call it--at
the end of the arch next to the narrowing of the nave into the
chancel, and in the shadow of that contraction. The face was
beautiful in feature (the next to it was a grinning monkey), but it
was not the features that were the most striking part. There was a
half-open mouth, not in any way distorted out of its exquisite beauty
by the intense expression of suffering it conveyed. Any distortion of
the face by mental agony implies that a struggle with circumstance is
going on. But in this face, if such struggle had been, it was over
now. Cir