unknown to him! A slight odor, some faint perfume of its owner, came
from the book; it was the same she had noticed in the dress Low had
given her. She flung the volume to the ground, and, throwing her arms
over the back of the pew before her, buried her face in her hands.

In that light and attitude she might have seemed some rapt acolyte
abandoned to self-communion. But whatever yearning her soul might have
had for higher sympathy or deeper consolation, I fear that the spiritual
Tabernacle of Excelsior and the Reverend Mr. Wynn did not meet that
requirement. She only felt the dry, oven-like heat of that vast shell,
empty of sentiment and beauty, hollow in its pretense and dreary in its
desolation. She only saw in it a chief altar for the glorification of
this girl who had absorbed even the pure worship of her companion, and
converted and degraded his sublime paganism to her petty creed. With a
woman's withering contempt for her own art displayed in another woman,
she thought how she herself could have touched him with the peace that
the majesty of their woodland aisles--so unlike this pillared sham--had
taught her own passionate heart, had she but dared. Mingling with this
imperfect theology, she felt she could have proved to him also that
a brunette and a woman of her experience was better than an immature
blonde. She began to loathe herself for coming hither, and dreaded to
meet his face. Here a sudden thought struck her. What if he had not come
here? What if she had been mistaken? What if her rash interpretation
of his absence from the wood that night was simple madness? What if
he should return--if he had already returned? She rose to her feet,
whitening yet joyful with the thought. She could return at once; what
was the girl to her now? Yet there was time to satisfy herself if he
were at HER house. She had been told where it was; she could find it in
the dark; an open door or window would betray some sign or sound of
the occupants. She rose, replaced her hat over her eyes, knotted her