If it be true that there is no courage equal to that which a great love begets in a woman, Honora’s at that moment was sublime.  Her cheeks tingled, and her knees weakened under her as she ran the gantlet to the church door, where she was met by a gentleman on whose face she read astonishment unalloyed:  amazement, perhaps, is not too strong a word for the sensation it conveyed to her, and it occurred to her afterwards that there was an element in it of outrage.  It was a countenance peculiarly adapted to such an expression—­yellow, smooth-shaven, heavy-jowled, with one drooping eye; and she needed not to be told that she had encountered, at the outset, the very pillar of pillars.  The frock coat, the heavy watch chain, the square-toed boots, all combined to make a Presence.

An instinctive sense of drama amongst the onlookers seemed to create a hush, as though these had been the unwilling witnesses to an approaching collision and were awaiting the crash.  The gentleman stood planted in the inner doorway, his drooping eye fixed on hers.

“I am Mrs. Chiltern,” she faltered.

He hesitated the fraction of an instant, but he somehow managed to make it plain that the information was superfluous.  He turned without a word and marched majestically up the aisle before her to the fourth pew from the front on the right.  There he faced about and laid a protesting hand on the carved walnut, as though absolving himself in the sight of his God and his fellow-citizens.  Honora fell on her knees.

She strove to calm herself by prayer:  but the glances of a congregation focussed between her shoulder-blades seemed to burn her back, and the thought of the concentration of so many minds upon her distracted her own.  She could think of no definite prayer.  Was this God’s tabernacle? or the market-place, and she at the tail of a cart?  And was she not Hugh Chiltern’s wife, entitled to his seat in the place of worship of his fathers?  She rose from her knees, and her eyes fell on the softly glowing colours of a stained-glass window:  In memoriam—­Alicia Reyburn Chiltern.  Hugh’s mother, the lady in whose seat she sat.

The organist, a sprightly young man, came in and began turning over his music, and the choir took their-places, in the old-fashioned’ manner.  Then came the clergyman.  His beard was white, his face long and narrow and shrivelled, his forehead protruding, his eyes of the cold blue of a winter’s sky.  The service began, and Honora repeated the familiar prayers which she had learned by heart in childhood—­until her attention was arrested by the words she spoke:  “We have offended against Thy holy laws.”  Had she?  Would not God bless her marriage?  It was not until then that she began to pray with an intensity that blotted out the world that He would not punish her if she had done wrong in His sight.  Surely, if she lived henceforth in fear of Him, He would let her keep this priceless love which had come to her!  And it was impossible that He should regard it as an inordinate and sinful affection—­since it had filled her life with light.  As the wife of Hugh Chiltern she sought a blessing.  Would God withhold it?  He would not, she was sure, if they lived a sober and a righteous life.  He would take that into account, for He was just.