He was one part of a dream and she
another, and he stood as if waiting, and fearing, to be awakened.
Nancy, having done all, came out of the pew, and standing in the aisle, looked
back at the scene of her labors with pride and content. And as she looked,
some desire to stay a little longer in the dear old place must have come over
her, or some dread of going back to her lonely cottage, for she sat down in
Justin's corner of the pew with folded hands, her eyes fixed dreamily on the
pulpit and her ears hearing:--
Not as though I wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that which we had
from the beginning.
Justin's grasp on the latch tightened as he prepared to close the door and
leave the place, but his instinct did not warn him quickly enough, after all,
for, obeying some uncontrollable impulse, Nancy suddenly fell on her knees in
the pew and buried her face in the cushions. The dream broke, and in an
instant Justin was a man--worse than that, he was an eavesdropper, ashamed of
his unsuspected presence. He felt himself standing, with covered head and feet
shod, in the holy temple of a woman's heart.
But his involuntary irreverence brought abundant grace with it.
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