“Well,” he said, with a smile, as he returned his watch to his pocket, “we have plenty of time. Come out, brother!”
Caught by this subtle snare, many of the presumably wavering individuals found it impossible to refuse his invitation, while a few sat down again.
When the meeting eventually drew to a close, after a long hymn, sung with the same exciting rhythm as the first one, Mauney rose with the rest and moved impatiently toward the door, walking beside Jean Byrne and talking to her of obvious matters. Her face, he noticed, was flushed and her eyes shining with unusual brightness from delicately moist lids, while her voice seemed husky and uncertain. The auditorium emptied slowly. The steps leading down from the front doorway to the walk presented the customary Sunday night groups of village beaux waiting to accompany their sweethearts home, or perhaps stroll with them through quiet, moonlit streets.
Beulah village council, anxious to keep taxes at a minimum, had never provided street-lighting, so that pedestrians, on dark nights, carried lanterns, unless they were lovers, in which case they relied either on moonlight or familiarity with the local geography.
Jean Byrne had come to the village in the buggy of Mr. and Mrs. Fitch with whom she boarded on the Lantern Marsh road, but Mauney, being alone, invited her to drive down with him. She accepted and soon they were off together.
“I could have kicked over a pew in there to-night,” said Mauney at length, tersely.
“I knew you wouldn’t like it,” she said. “Personally I think it’s very unreal. Perhaps some people derive good from it, though.”
“Perhaps. But it hasn’t any connection with real life, Miss Byrne. I can’t help feeling you’ve got to let the common daylight into things.”
“That’s good.”
“It’s easy enough to see how they get pulled into it,” he went on. “There’s a sort of excitement about it. I don’t think one person by himself could get so excited.”