But when he suddenly perceived Rachel, all these thoughts
were driven out of his head, and he thought only of her. The psalms,
the prayers, the Litany, and the sermon were all reduced to one chanting
sound which paused, and then renewed itself, a little higher or a little
lower. He stared alternately at Rachel and at the ceiling, but his
expression was now produced not by what he saw but by something in his
mind. He was almost as painfully disturbed by his thoughts as she was by
hers.
Early in the service Mrs. Flushing had discovered that she had taken up
a Bible instead of a prayer-book, and, as she was sitting next to Hirst,
she stole a glance over his shoulder. He was reading steadily in the
thin pale-blue volume. Unable to understand, she peered closer, upon
which Hirst politely laid the book before her, pointing to the first
line of a Greek poem and then to the translation opposite.
"What's that?" she whispered inquisitively.
"Sappho," he replied. "The one Swinburne did--the best thing that's ever
been written."
Mrs. Flushing could not resist such an opportunity. She gulped down the
Ode to Aphrodite during the Litany, keeping herself with difficulty from
asking when Sappho lived, and what else she wrote worth reading, and
contriving to come in punctually at the end with "the forgiveness of
sins, the Resurrection of the body, and the life everlastin'.
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