re happening to be a Calvary print hanging between them, and,
as if the scene suggested the action, she at length jumped up and
withdrew another book from her box--a volume of verse--and turned to
the familiar poem--
Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean:
The world has grown grey from thy breath!
which she read to the end. Presently she put out the candles,
undressed, and finally extinguished her own light.
She was of an age which usually sleeps soundly, yet to-night she
kept waking up, and every time she opened her eyes there was enough
diffused light from the street to show her the white plaster figures,
standing on the chest of drawers in odd contrast to their environment
of text and martyr, and the Gothic-framed Crucifix-picture that was
only discernible now as a Latin cross, the figure thereon being
obscured by the shades.
On one of these occasions the church clocks struck some small hour.
It fell upon the ears of another person who sat bending over his
books at a not very distant spot in the same city. Being Saturday
night the morrow was one on which Jude had not set his alarm-clock to
call him at his usually early time, and hence he had stayed up, as
was his custom, two or three hours later than he could afford to do
on any other day of the week. Just then he was earnestly reading
from his Griesbach's text. At the very time that Sue was tossing and
staring at her figures, the policeman and belated citizens passing
along under his window might have heard, if they had stood still,
strange syllables mumbled with fervour within--words that had for
Jude an indescribable enchantment: inexplicable sounds something
like these:--
"_All hemin heis Theos ho Pater, ex hou ta panta, kai hemeis eis
auton:_"
Till the sounds rolled with reverent loudness, as a book was heard
to close:--
"_Kai heis Kurios Iesous Christos, di hou ta panta kai hemeis di
autou!_"
IV
He was a handy man at his trade, an all-round man, as artizans in
country-towns are apt to be. In London the man who carves the boss
or knob of leafage declines to cut the fragment of moulding which
merges in that leafage, as if it were a degradation to do the second
half of one whole. When there was not much Gothic moulding for
Jude to run, or much window-tracery on the bankers, he would go out
lettering monuments or tombstones, and take a pleasure in the change
of handiwork.
The next time that he saw her was when he was on
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