The concluding versicles and prayers were spoken kneeling, and Alex was compelled to turn towards the High Altar.
She was quivering from head to foot, and gripped the arms of her stall in order to restrain herself from turning her head. Every nerve was strained in her attempt to hear any movement at the back of the chapel, but she could distinguish nothing.
The few minutes that elapsed before the bell sounded for rising, seemed to her interminable.
She had grown accustomed lately to the grip of these nervous agonies, to which she became a prey for the most trivial of causes.
The modern exploitation of hysteria, however, was still in its embryo stage, half-way between the genteel hysterics of the 'sixties and the suppressed neuroticism of the new century. She did not diagnose her complaint. With the sensation, familiar to her, of blood pumping from her heart to her head, making her face burn, while her hands and feet remained dead and cold, she rose from her knees.
Although she had expected nothing else, a feeling of sick disappointment invaded her as she saw that the Superior's place had been noiselessly vacated.
With leaden feet, she moved out of the chapel and slowly resumed the black apron and the stuff sleeves that protected her habit.
In the absence of any direct order to the contrary, she knew that she must take her accustomed place in the class-room of the moyennes, and that the English lesson must proceed as usual.
"A vos places."
She had long ago learnt to speak French fluently, but never without an unmistakable British accent and intonation.