It was all so sweet and restful. Religion had never appealed to her
before. The business-like service in the bare cold chapel where she had
sat swinging her feet and yawning as a child had only repelled her. She
could recall her father, aloof and awe-inspiring in his Sunday black,
passing round the bag. Her mother, always veiled, sitting beside her, a
thin, tall woman with passionate eyes and ever restless hands; the women
mostly overdressed, and the sleek, prosperous men trying to look meek. At
school and at Girton, chapel, which she had attended no oftener than she
was obliged, had had about it the same atmosphere of chill compulsion.
But here was poetry. She wondered if, after all, religion might not have
its place in the world--in company with the other arts. It would be a
pity for it to die out. There seemed nothing to take its place. All
these lovely cathedrals, these dear little old churches, that for
centuries had been the focus of men's thoughts and aspirations. The
harbour lights, illumining the troubled waters of their lives. What
could be done with them? They could hardly be maintained out of the
public funds as mere mementoes of the past.
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