“Yes?” he helped her. “That I was one of those who go to church, you mean?”
“Oh no!” she protested; but it was what she had meant.
“You are right,” he said, without heeding the protest, and his ugly but compellingly attractive face was turned to hers. “I'm not in the least a scoffer, though; pray believe that. It's just that I--” he hesitated. “Do you remember a little verse:
'Although I enter not, Yet round about the spot Sometimes I hover, And at the sacred gate With longing eyes I wait, Expectant of her.'”
Her face flushed. “But,” she reverted, with naïveté, “you said you were going to church--”
“But because I knew you were one of the women who would be sure to go!” he said, positively.
She rebelled. “I don't look devotional at all!”
“But your eyes do,” he declared. “They're suggestive of cathedrals and beautiful dimness, and a voice going up and up, like the 'Lark' song of Schubert's, don't you know!”
“No, I _don't!_” she said, wilfully; but she was conscious of his eyes on her face, and angry that her cheeks flushed.
They both were silent for a little, and when they left Mrs. Manstey's grounds for the uneven country road, that became shortly, by courtesy, the village street, they had a view of the little church with its tiny tower.
“The post-office,” Farringdon explained, “is at the other end of the street. Service is beginning, I dare say. Shall we wait until it is over, or post the letter now?”
“No; after service,” she agreed, and inopportunely the letter slipped from her hand and fell, with the address down, on the grass. She stooped hurriedly, but he was before her, and picking it up, returned it scrupulously, with the right side down, as it had fallen. She slipped it quickly, almost guiltily, into her prayer-book.
The church was small, the congregation smaller, and the clergyman a little weary of the empty benches. But the two faces in the Manstey pew were so bright, so vivid with the vigor of youth, that his jaded mind freshened to meet the interest of new hearers.
But neither Edith nor Farringdon listened attentively to the sermon, for their minds were busy with other things. He was thinking of the girl beside him, whose hymnal he was sharing, and whose voice, very sweet and clear, if of no great compass, blended with his own fine tenor. Her thoughts could not stray far from the letter and--from other things!