"No," he mumbled, "I guess I—Wait, though. I've forgotten. Does he mean we're supposed to take it as real flesh and blood?"
"Only the Romanists hold to that. We take it symbolically."
"Then why doesn't he say so?"
"He did. Besides, every one understands. You are coming?"
"Wine—alcohol—and she still insists!" he muttered in a thick, almost inarticulate voice.
Intent upon the sacrament, she failed to heed either his tone or the despair in his tense face.
"Come. We are the last," she urged. "We'll soon be out in the open air."
With a heaviness that she mistook for solemnity, he stepped out into the aisle for her to leave the pew, and walked beside her up into the chancel.
She knelt near the extreme end of the altar rail, and bent over with her face in the little hand that she had bared to receive the communion bread. For a moment Blake stood beside her, staring dubiously at the venerable figure of the bishop. Mr. Vincent passed between. Blake took a step to the left and knelt down beside Genevieve.
The only sounds in the chancel were the intoned murmurings of the bishop and Mr. Vincent and the labored breathing of an asthmatic woman next to Genevieve. The less indistinct of the murmuring voices drew near. Genevieve thrust out her palm a little way. Blake, without looking up, did the same.