was in his and her appointed place; old Colonel
Rideout with the purple gills not kneeling because of his gout; young
Edward Walter, heir to the sugar factory, not kneeling because he was
lazy; sporting Mr. Harper, whose golf handicap was +3, not kneeling
because to do so would spoil the crease of his trousers; old Mrs. Dean
with her bonnet and bugles, the worst gossip in Skeaton, her eyes
raised to heaven; the Quiller girls with their hard red colour and
their hard bright eyes; Mr. Fortinum, senior, with his County Council
stomach and his J.P. neck; the dear old Miss Fursleis who believed in
God and lived accordingly; young Captain Trent, who believed in his
moustache and lived accordingly ... Oh yes, there they all were--and
there, too, were Grace and Maggie kneeling side by side.

Maggie! His eyes rested upon her. Her face suddenly struck him as being
of extraordinary beauty. He had never thought her beautiful before;
very plain, of course. Every one knew that she was plain. But to-day
her face and profile had the simplicity, the purity, the courage of a
Madonna in one of the old pictures--or, rather, of one of those St.
John the Baptist boys gazing up into the face of the Christ--child as
it lay in its mother's arms. He finished the "Confession"
hurriedly--Maggie's face faded from his view; he saw now only a garden
of hats and heads, the bright varnished colour of the church around and
about them all.

He gave out the psalms; there was a rustle of leaves, and soon shrill,
untrained voices of the choir-boys were screaming the chant like a
number of baby steam-whistles in competition.

When he climbed into the pulpit he tried again to discover Maggie's
face as he had already seen it. He could not; it had been, perhaps, a
trick of light and, in any case, she was hidden now behind the stout
stolidity of Grace. He looked around at the other faces beneath him and
saw them settle themselves into their customary expressions of torpor,
vacuity and expectation. Very little expectation! They knew well
enough, by this time, the kind of thing to expect from him, the turn of
phrase, the rise and fall of the voice, the pause dramatic, the whisper
expostulatory, the thrust imperative, the smile seductive.

He had often been told, as a curate, that he was a wonderful preacher.
His round jolly face, his beaming smile, a certain dramatic gift, had
helped him. "He is so human," he had heard people say. For many years
he had lived