ng or caring, so she was not tantalized and
enraged, only here, with eyes half-shut and lips pursed together, the
atmosphere of forced solemnity increased her anger. All round her were
people pretending to feel what they did not feel, while somewhere above
her floated the idea which they could none of them grasp, which they
pretended to grasp, always escaping out of reach, a beautiful idea,
an idea like a butterfly. One after another, vast and hard and cold,
appeared to her the churches all over the world where this blundering
effort and misunderstanding were perpetually going on, great buildings,
filled with innumerable men and women, not seeing clearly, who
finally gave up the effort to see, and relapsed tamely into praise and
acquiescence, half-shutting their eyes and pursing up their lips. The
thought had the same sort of physical discomfort as is caused by a film
of mist always coming between the eyes and the printed page. She did her
best to brush away the film and to conceive something to be worshipped
as the service went on, but failed, always misled by the voice of Mr.
Bax saying things which misrepresented the idea, and by the patter of
baaing inexpressive human voices falling round her like damp leaves. The
effort was tiring and dispiriting. She ceased to listen, and fixed her
eyes on the face of a woman near her, a hospital nurse, whose expression
of devout attention seemed to prove that she was at any rate receiving
satisfaction. But looking at her carefully she came to the conclusion
that the hospital nurse was only slavishly acquiescent, and that the
look of satisfaction was produced by no splendid conception of God
within her. How indeed, could she conceive anything far outside her own
experience, a woman with a commonplace face like hers, a little round
red face, upon which trivial duties and trivial spites had drawn lines,
whose weak blue eyes saw without intensity or individuality, whose
features were blurred, insensitive, and callous? She was adoring
something shallow and smug, clinging to it, so the obstinate mouth
witnessed, with the assiduity of a limpet; nothing would tear her from
her demure belief in her own virtue and the virtues of her religion. She
was a limpet, with the sensitive side of her stuck to a rock, for ever
dead to the rush of fresh and beautiful things past her. The face
of this single worshipper became printed on Rachel's mind with an
impression of keen horror, and she had it sudd