stairs, and here by the lamp his wife quietly knitting while he read
to her. He was reading Paradise Lost: "The mind is its own place,
and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven."

He did a certain amount of serious reading every year.

On Sunday mornings, during the service, Elizabeth earnestly tried
to banish all worldly thoughts. In spite of this resolve, however,
she was always conscious of a certain regret that the choir seats
necessitated turning her profile to the congregation. At the age
of twelve she had decided that her nose was too short, and nothing
had happened since to change her conviction. She seldom so much
as glanced at the congregation. During her slow progress up and
down the main aisle behind the Courtney boy, who was still a
soprano and who carried the great gold cross, she always looked
straight ahead. Or rather, although she was unconscious of this,
slightly up. She always looked up when she sang, for she had
commenced to take singing lessons when the piano music rack was
high above her head.

So she still lifted her eyes as she went up the aisle, and was
extremely serious over the whole thing. Because it is a solemn
matter to take a number of people who have been up to that moment
engrossed in thoughts of food or golf or servants or business, and
in the twinkling of an eye, as the prayer book said about death,
turn their minds to worship.

Nevertheless, although she never looked at the pews, she was always
conscious of two of them. The one near the pulpit was the Sayres'
and it was the social calendar of the town. When Mrs. Sayre was in