ed and she sang that
afternoon, and never again had Paul's ears drunk in such tones of
heaven.

He went home in an ecstasy of delight and anguish. How beautiful she
was! what a grace enveloped her! Her very name was a ravishment--a name
of spring and flowers and pure bright skies. May! He dared to whisper
it, and he tingled from head to heel. His heart fondled it: May! May!
May! and, with inexpressible vague, sweet longing, May! once more. Then
her hair! then her voice! then the rosy softness of her hand! then, with
hideous revulsion, from her perfections to himself! The gulf of shame!
His boots were an epic of despair, his necktie was a tragedy. Then back
to her with all the graces of the heavens upon her! Then back to himself
again, and the deep damnation of the button which was missing from his
waistcoat Paul was a poet, and should have had a soul above buttons; but
before the phantom of that missing button his soul grovelled, until it
sprang up once more to hover round her foot, her hand, her eyes, her
voice, her name of May! May! May! and, with shudders of frostiest
self-reproach and richest pleasure, round the memory of that kiss!

In a week or two Paul had grown devoutly religious, and had no idea of
the real why. The Church Vale cousins were ardent churchgoers, for the
girls were at the time of life for ardour, and both the Vicar and his
Curate were unmarried. Paul, whose proper place of Sabbath boredom was
Ebenezer, was welcome as a proselyte, and had a seat in the family
pew, and the rapture of walking homeward sometimes by the side of the
feminine magnet.

So the dweller at the tent door sees himself at church, a pious varier
from chapel. The July sunbeams are falling through stained glass; the
roof-beams of the nondescript old building are half visible in shadow.
The windows are open, and a warm, spiced wind flutters through in
pleasantly successful disputation with odours of dry-rot and chilly
earth and stone. The sheep are bleating amongst the mounded graves, and
the curate is bleating at the lectern. A yearning peace is in Paul's
heart, and the pretty distant cousin is near at hand, with a smell of
dry lavender in her dress. The first twining of feeling and belief is
here, the earliest of many of those juggleries of Nature which make a
fool of reason. Oh, sweet hour! oh, happy world! oh, holy place, where
she is! Oh, harmless, innocent calf-love! A jolly old throstle is
singing away in the elm which ov