The sound spread through the chapel as the rings of water spread from a fallen stone.

The twenty or twenty-five people who composed the congregation first bowed their heads and then sat up and looked about them.

It was very quiet, and the light down here seemed paler than the light above.

The usual bows and smiles were dispensed with, but they recognised each other.
The Lord's Prayer was read over them.

As the childlike battle of voices rose, the congregation, many of whom had only met on the staircase, felt themselves pathetically united and well-disposed towards each other.
As if the prayer were a torch applied to fuel, a smoke seemed to rise automatically and fill the place with the ghosts of innumerable services on innumerable Sunday mornings at home.