Maggie wondered, as she looked about her, how she could have raised
in her own imagination, around the Chapel and its affairs, so
formidable an atmosphere of terror and tyrannic discipline. Here
gathered together were a few women, tired, pale, many of them
uneducated, awaiting like children the opening of a box, the
springing into flower of a dry husk of a seed, the raising of the
curtain on some wonderful scene. Maggie, as she looked at them, knew
that they must be disappointed, and her heart ached for them all,
yes, even for Amy Warlock, her declared enemy. She lost, as she sat
there, for the moment all sense of her own personal history. She
only saw them all tired and hungry and expectant; perhaps, after
all, there WAS something behind it all--something for which they had
a right to be searching; even of that she had not sure knowledge--
but the pathos and also the bravery of their search touched and
moved her. She was beginning to understand something of the beauty
that hovered like a bird always just out of sight about the ugly
walls of the Chapel.
"Whatever they want, poor dears," she thought, "I do hope they get
it.
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