"
Laura lifted her head at this and dropped with the other exhorters on
her knees on the floor. As she moved she bent upon the audience a
preoccupied gaze, by which she seemed to observe numbers, chances, from
a point remote and emotionally involved. Lindsay's impression was that
she looked at him as from behind a glass door. Then her eyes closed as
the other woman began, and through their lids, as it were, he could see
that she was again caught up, though her body remained abased, her hands
interlocked between her knees, swaying in unison with the petition. The
Ensign was a little, meagre, freckled woman, whose wisps of colourless
hair and tight drawn-down lips suggested that in the secular world she
would have been bedraggled and a nagger. She gained an elevation, it was
plain, from the Bengali dress; it kept her away from the temptation of
cheap plush and dirty cotton lace; and her business gave her a
complacency which was doubtless accepted as sanctification by her
fellow-officers, especially by her husband, who had announced her
influence with the Divine Being, and who was himself of an inferior
commission. She prayed in a complaining way, and in a strained minor key
that assumed a spiritual intimacy with all who listened, her key to
hearts.
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