with relief. More than it had ever yet come home to him it struck
him as good there should be churches.

This one was almost empty and the other altars were dim; a verger
shuffled about, an old woman coughed, but it seemed to Stransom
there was hospitality in the thick sweet air. Was it only the
savour of the incense or was it something of larger intention? He
had at any rate quitted the great grey suburb and come nearer to
the warm centre. He presently ceased to feel intrusive, gaining at
last even a sense of community with the only worshipper in his
neighbourhood, the sombre presence of a woman, in mourning
unrelieved, whose back was all he could see of her and who had sunk
deep into prayer at no great distance from him. He wished he could
sink, like her, to the very bottom, be as motionless, as rapt in
prostration. After a few moments he shifted his seat; it was
almost indelicate to be so aware of her. But Stransom subsequently
quite lost himself, floating away on the sea of light. If
occasions like this had been more frequent in his life he would
have had more present the great original type, set up in a myriad
temples, of the unapproachable shrine he had erected in his mind.
That shrine had begun in vague likeness to church pomps, but the
echo had ended by growing more distinct than the sound. The sound
now rang out, the type blazed at him with all its fires and with a
mystery of radiance in which endless meanings could glow. The
thing became as he sat there his appropriate altar and each starry
candle an appropriate vow. He numbered them, named them, grouped
them--it was the silent roll-call of his Dead. They made together
a brightness vast and intense, a brightness in which the mere
chapel of his thoughts grew so dim that as it faded away he asked
himself if he shouldn't find his real comfort in some material act,