est; he forgot the
first responses; he was sure the Sanctus-bell was too far away; he
wished that Mr. Dorward would not mutter quite so inaudibly. Gradually,
however, the meetness of the gestures prescribed for him by the ancient
ritual cured his self-consciousness and included him in its pattern, so
that now for the first time he was aware of the significance of the
preface to the Sanctus: _It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty,
that we should at all times, and in all places, give thanks unto thee, O
Lord, Holy Father, Almighty Everlasting God._

Twenty minutes ago when he was ringing the church bell Mark had
experienced the rapture of creative noise, the sense of individual
triumph over time and space; and the sound of his ringing came back to
him from the vaulted roof of the church with such exultation as the
missal thrush may know when he sits high above the fretted boughs of an
oak and his music plunges forth upon the January wind. Now when Mark was
ringing the Sanctus-bell, it was with a sense of his place in the scheme
of worship. If one listens to the twitter of a single linnet in open
country or to the buzz of a solitary fly upon a window pane, how
incredible it is that myriads of them twittering and buzzing together
should be the song of April, the murmur of June. And this Sanctus-bell
that tinkled so inadequately, almost so frivolously when sounded by a
server in Meade Cantorum church, was yet part of an unimaginable volume
of worship that swelled in unison with Angels and Archangels lauding and
magnifying the Holy Name. The importance of ceremony was as deeply
impressed upon Mark that morning as if he had been formally initiated to
great mysteries. His coming confirmation, which had been postponed from
July 2nd to September 8th seemed much more momentous now than it seemed
yesterday. It was no longer a step to Communion, but was apprehended as
a Sacrament itself, and though Mr. Ogilvie was inclined to regret the
ritualistic development of his catechumen, Mark derived much strength
from what was really the awakening in him of a sense of form, which more
than anything makes emotion durable. Perhaps Ogilvie may have been a
little jealous of Dorward's influence; he also was really alarmed at the
prospect, as he said, of so much fire being wasted upon poker-work. In
the end what between Dorward's encouragement of Mark's ritualistic
tendencies and the "spiking up" process to which he was himself being
subje