between a murmur and a moan, distinctly audible. She felt his gaze as a
gross, tangible thing, as a violent hand, parting the veils of prayer.
She bowed her head lower and pressed her hands to her face till the blood
tingled.

The sermon obliged her to sit upright and exposed. It gave him
iniquitous opportunity. He turned in his seat; his eyes watched her under
half-closed lids, two slits shining through the thick, dark curtain of
their lashes. He kept on pulling at his moustache, as if to hide the dumb
but expressive adoration of his mouth. Anne, who felt that her soul had
been overtaken, trapped, and bared to the outrage, removed herself by a
yard's length till the hymn brought them together, linked by the book she
could not withhold. The music penetrated her soul and healed its hurt.


"Christian, doth thou see them,
On the holy ground,
How the troops of Midian
Prowl and prowl around?"


sang Anne in a dulcet pianissimo, obedient to the choir.

Profound abstraction veiled him, a treacherous unspiritual calm. Majendie
was a man with a baritone voice, which at times possessed him like a
furious devil. It was sleeping in him now, biding its time, ready, she
knew, to be roused by the first touch of a _crescendo_. The _crescendo_
came.