It was Sunday the next day. Jacobsen appeared at breakfast in the neatest of black suits. He looked, Marjorie thought, more than ever like a cashier. She longed to tell him to hurry up or he’d miss the 8.53 for the second time this week and the manager would be annoyed. Marjorie herself was, rather consciously, not in Sunday best.
“What is the name of the Vicar?” Jacobsen inquired, as he helped himself to bacon.
“Trubshaw. Luke Trubshaw, I believe.”
“Does he preach well?”
“He didn’t when I used to hear him. But I don’t often go to church now, so I don’t know what he’s like these days.”
“Why don’t you go to church?” Jacobsen inquired, with a silkiness of tone which veiled the crude outlines of his leading question.
Marjorie was painfully conscious of blushing. She was filled with rage against Jacobsen. “Because,” she said firmly, “I don’t think it necessary to give expression to my religious feelings by making a lot of”—she hesitated a moment—“a lot of meaningless gestures with a crowd of other people.”
“You used to go,” said Jacobsen.
“When I was a child and hadn’t thought about these things.”
Jacobsen was silent, and concealed a smile in his coffee-cup. Really, he said to himself, there ought to be religious conscription for women—and for most men, too. It was grotesque the way these people thought they could stand by themselves—the fools, when there was the infinite authority of organized religion to support their ridiculous feebleness.