Yet while this selfish tumult was going on in
her soul, her eyes were bent down on her prayer-book, and the eyelids
with their dark fringe looked as lovely as ever. Adam Bede thought so,
as he glanced at her for a moment on rising from his knees.
But Adam's thoughts of Hetty did not deafen him to the service; they
rather blended with all the other deep feelings for which the church
service was a channel to him this afternoon, as a certain consciousness
of our entire past and our imagined future blends itself with all our
moments of keen sensibility. And to Adam the church service was the
best channel he could have found for his mingled regret, yearning, and
resignation; its interchange of beseeching cries for help with outbursts
of faith and praise, its recurrent responses and the familiar rhythm of
its collects, seemed to speak for him as no other form of worship could
have done; as, to those early Christians who had worshipped from their
childhood upwards in catacombs, the torch-light and shadows must have
seemed nearer the Divine presence than the heathenish daylight of the
streets. The secret of our emotions never lies in the bare object, but
in its subtle relations to our own past: no wonder the secret escapes
the unsympathizing observer, who might as well put on his spectacles to
discern odours.
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