whole being.

But the marvellous new feeling did not definitely begin till after
Sunday-school was over, when she was helping Miss Simpson collect
the song-books. Not the big, thick hymn-books used for the church
service, but smaller ones, with pasteboard backs and different
tunes. Melissa would have preferred the Sunday-school to use the
big, cloth-covered hymnals. Somehow they looked more religious; just
as their tunes, with slow, long-drawn cadences, somehow sounded more
religious than the Sunday-school's cheerful tunes. Why this should
be so Melissa didn't know; there were many things she didn't yet
understand about religion. But she asked no questions; experience
had taught her that the most serious questions may be strangely
turned into food for laughter by grown-ups.

It was when she carried the song-books into the choir-room to stack
them on some chairs, that she noticed the choir had come in and was
beginning to practise a real hymn. She loitered. It was an
especially religious hymn, very slow and mournful. They sang:

"A-a--sle-e-e-ep in Je-e-e--sus--Ble-e-es--ed sle-e-e-ep--From which
none e-e-ev--er Wake to we-e-e-ep--"

The choir did not observe Melissa; did not suspect that state of
deliciousness which, starting from the skin, slowly crept into her
very soul. She stood there, very unobtrusive, drinking in the sadly
sweet sounds. Up on the stained-glass window the sunlight filtered
through blue-and-red-and-golden angels, sending shafts of heavenly
colour across the floor; and the fibres of her soul, enmeshed in
music, seemed to stretch out to mingle with that heavenly colour. It