Thus the time went on, wearing a calm, bright look upon its surface.
Letters came from England, letters came from Willoughby, and the days
accumulated their small events which shaped the year. Superficially,
three odes of Pindar were mended, Helen covered about five inches of her
embroidery, and St. John completed the first two acts of a play. He and
Rachel being now very good friends, he read them aloud to her, and she
was so genuinely impressed by the skill of his rhythms and the variety
of his adjectives, as well as by the fact that he was Terence's friend,
that he began to wonder whether he was not intended for literature
rather than for law. It was a time of profound thought and sudden
revelations for more than one couple, and several single people.
A Sunday came, which no one in the villa with the exception of Rachel
and the Spanish maid proposed to recognise. Rachel still went to church,
because she had never, according to Helen, taken the trouble to think
about it. Since they had celebrated the service at the hotel she went
there expecting to get some pleasure from her passage across the garden
and through the hall of the hotel, although it was very doubtful whether
she would see Terence, or at any rate have the chance of speaking to
him.
As the greater number of visitors at the hotel were English, there was
almost as much difference between Sunday and Wednesday as there is in
England, and Sunday appeared here as there, the mute black ghost or
penitent spirit of the busy weekday.
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