— — —Belle knelt on the rough red hassock, her elbows on the pale, varnished pew, her face in her hands. It was an uncomfortable attitude — she maintained it as a penance for her own impatience. She had bought a knot of snowdrops when passing through Covent Garden — early costly flowers, cold and strong — she had laid them beside the rubbed broken-backed Prayer Book, and through her fingers she looked steadily at these two objects, the dingy book, the cluster of the pure flowers. She had never been in St. Paul’s church before. It was, she thought, a dismal harbourage from the dirt and turmoil of the common street. The atmosphere was not unlike that of Bow Street police court; here, as there, an unnatural light from high-placed windows gleamed on light varnished seats, but in the church ins
