ight of her, hearing the
same sounds, breathing the same air. Across the short dividing space,
spirit had embraced spirit. He claimed her.--Had not his will, indeed,
far more than any curiosity regarding the identity of poor, plump little
Theresa, compelled her to look around?

She demanded nothing further, letting herself dwell in a perfection of
content--without before or after--possible only to the pure in heart and
to the young.

The hymn concluded, Damaris knelt, while Reginald Sawyer, having mounted
into the pulpit, read the invocation; mechanically rose from her knees
with the rest, and disposed herself in the inner corner of the pew,
sitting sideways so that her left hand might rest upon the carven marble
margin of the tomb. She liked touch of it still, in the quietude of her
great content, cherishing a pretty fancy of the knight and his lady's
sympathy and that also of their sprightly little footstool dog.

Otherwise she was deaf to outward things, deliciously oblivious, wrapped
away sweetly within herself. Hence she quite failed to notice how
awkwardly Sawyer stumbled, treading on the fronts of his long surplice
when going up the pulpit stairs. How he fumbled with his manuscript as
he flattened it out on the cushioned desk. Or how husky was his voice,
to the point of the opening sentences being almost inaudible. The young
clergyman suffered, indeed, so it appeared, from a painfully excessive
fit of nervousness. All this she missed, not awakening from her state of
blissful trance until the sermon had been under way some good five to
ten minutes.

Her awakening even then was gradual. It was also unpleasant. It began in
vague and uneasy suspicion of something unusual and agitating toward. In
consciousness of a hushed and strained attention, very foreign to the
customary placid, not to say bovine, indifference of the ordinary country
congregation. The preacher's voice was audible enough now, in good truth,
though still under insufficient control. It roared, cracked upward,
approaching a scream. Sentences trod on one another's heels, so rapid was
his delivery; or bumped and jolted so overlaid was it with emphasis. He,
dealt in ugly words, too--"lies, drunkenness, theft, profanity;" and
worse still, "uncleanness, adultery, carnal debauchery." For not venial
sins only, but mortal sins likewise were rife in Deadham, as he averred,
matters of common knowledge and everyday occurrence--tolerated if not
openly encoura