After that there was a general sound of pages being turned as if they were in class, and then they read a little bit of the Old Testament about making a well, very much as school boys translate an easy passage from the _Anabasis_ when they have shut up their French grammar.

Then they returned to the New Testament and the sad and beautiful figure of Christ.

While Christ spoke they made another effort to fit his interpretation of life upon the lives they lived, but as they were all very different, some practical, some ambitious, some stupid, some wild and experimental, some in love, and others long past any feeling except a feeling of comfort, they did very different things with the words of Christ.
From their faces it seemed that for the most part they made no effort at all, and, recumbent as it were, accepted the ideas the words gave as representing goodness, in the same way, no doubt, as one of those industrious needlewomen had accepted the bright ugly pattern on her mat as beauty.
Whatever the reason might be, for the first time in her life, instead of slipping at once into some curious pleasant cloud of emotion, too familiar to be considered, Rachel listened critically to what was being said.

By the time they had swung in an irregular way from prayer to psalm, from psalm to history, from history to poetry, and Mr.Bax was giving out his text, she was in a state of acute discomfort.

Such was the discomfort she felt when forced to sit through an unsatisfactory piece of music badly played.