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'. Amen."

Meanwhile Hirst took out an envelope and began scribbling on the back of
it. When Mr. Bax mounted the pulpit he shut up Sappho with his envelope
between the pages, settled his spectacles, and fixed his gaze intently
upon the clergyman. Standing in the pulpit he looked very large and fat;
the light coming through the greenish unstained window-glass made his
face appear smooth and white like a very large egg.

He looked round at all the faces looking mildly up at him, although
some of them were the faces of men and women old enough to be his
grandparents, and gave out his text with weighty significance. The
argument of the sermon was that visitors to this beautiful land,