Then from the church door came
the sudden shock of words:
"_I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord._"
Helena, clutching at the back of the next pew, stood up with the rest.
Suddenly she swayed, as though the earth was moving under her feet....
The step of the bearers came heavily up the aisle. Her eyes fled from
what they carried--("oh, was he so tall?")--and then shuddered back
again to stare.
Martha King touched her arm; "We sit down now."
Helena sat down. Far outside her consciousness words were being said:
"Now is Christ risen--" but she did not hear them; she did not see the
people about her. She only saw, before the chancel, that long black
shape. After a while the doctor's wife touched her again; "Here we
stand up." Mechanically, she rose; her lips were moving in a terrified
whisper, and Martha King, glancing at her sidewise, looked
respectfully away. "Praying," the good woman thought; and softened a
little.
But Helena was far from prayer. As she stared at that black thing
before the chancel, her selfishness uncovered itself before her eyes
and showed its nakedness.
The solid ground of experience was heaving and staggering under her
feet, and in the midst of the elemental tumult, she had her first dim
glimpse of responsibility. It was a blasting glimpse, that sent her
cowering back to assertions of her right to her own happiness.
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