He knelt to pray, but it was an effort to formulate anything.

He was intensely conscious that morning that a meaning hitherto unfelt and unguessed lay behind his world, and even behind all this pomp and ceremony that he knew so well.

Rising, of course, when the senior curate began to intone the opening sentence in a manner which one felt was worthy even of St.John's, he allowed himself to study his surroundings as never before.
The church had, indeed, an air of great beauty in the morning sunlight.
The Renaissance galleries and woodwork, mellowed by time, were dusted by that soft warm glow, and the somewhat sparse congregation, in its magnificently isolated groups, was humanised by it too.

The stone of the chancel, flecked with colour, had a quiet dignity, and even the altar, ecclesiastically ludicrous, had a grace of its own.

There was to be a celebration after Matins.