“I’ll do it for you.”
She couldn’t escape now. She couldn’t run past him out of the door. It would be too ridiculous. Besides, she had a strange, wicked desire not to escape. She sat down on one of the shabby leather chairs and put her hat straight. The Reverend Castor stooped without a word and gathered up the music, and then, with one hand, he opened the drawer easily. She saw it happen with a chill of horror. It was as if the drawer had betrayed her.
She rose quickly and said, “It really wouldn’t open for me. It really wouldn’t.... I tried and tried.” (He would think she had planned it all.)
But when he turned toward her, he said gently, “Yes, I know. It’s a funny drawer. It sticks sometimes like that.” He was so calm and so ... usual, she had suddenly, without knowing why, a queer certainty that he understood what was happening there deep inside her, and was trying to still her uneasiness. The knowledge made her want to cry. If only for a second Philip would treat her thus....
He was rubbing his hands together. “Well, that was what I call a real choir practice. We’ve always needed some one like you, Naomi, to put spirit into them. It’s the way you make the piano talk. Why, it was like a new choir to-night.”
She looked away from him. “I tried my best. I hope they liked it.”
“It was wonderful, my child.”
There was a sudden, awkward silence, and Naomi said nervously, “Well, I ought to be going.”
She moved toward the door, and the Reverend Castor took up his hat and coat. “I’ll walk with you, Naomi. I want some air.”
Despite herself, she cried out in a sudden hysteria, “No, no. You mustn’t do that.”