She flung the volume to the ground, and, throwing her arms over the back of the pew before her, buried her face in her hands.
In that light and attitude she might have seemed some rapt acolyte abandoned to self-communion.

But whatever yearning her soul might have had for higher sympathy or deeper consolation, I fear that the spiritual Tabernacle of Excelsior and the Reverend Mr.Wynn did not meet that requirement.

She only felt the dry, oven-like heat of that vast shell, empty of sentiment and beauty, hollow in its pretense and dreary in its desolation.

She only saw in it a chief altar for the glorification of this girl who had absorbed even the pure worship of her companion, and converted and degraded his sublime paganism to her petty creed.

With a woman's withering contempt for her own art displayed in another woman, she thought how she herself could have touched him with the peace that the majesty of their woodland aisles--so unlike this pillared sham--had taught her own passionate heart, had she but dared.