"It's time now," she said tremulously. "I must go. You'll follow soon, Charles." "I suppose you must have your way, Catherine," he said. He looked after her as she disappeared and the door of the old inn closed behind her. Then a dark-coated man held up his hand for silence and the whole assembly went down upon its knees; Heber, too, knelt in his brake of alder. The dark-coated man began to pray aloud. The prayer had continued a little time when Charles, who was looking eagerly towards the house from under the hand with which he had covered his face, saw the four women emerge again and come across the yard. They approached slowly, one behind the other, a grey-headed woman first; and there was something in the solemn demeanour of each that sent Charles Saunders's mind back to the woodcuts of martyrdoms and executions he had seen as a boy in his school history-books. This half-barbarous scene was heightening the barrier which his slightly superior station had raised between himself and Catherine Dennis, though he was to be married to her in a week, and though he believed it to have fallen altogether. He frowned as the prayer ceased and he took his hands from his eyes. So far as he was anything, he was a Baptist by force of parentage and tradition, though the doctrine of total immersion appealed neither to him nor to his family. Nevertheless, he had promised her that he would embrace it practically, and he glanced at the small knot of men who awaited their turn to be baptized and with whom he was to present himself when the women came up from the pool. The quiet figures stood modestly in a row behind the minister, Catherine and the grey-haired woman together; the girl's colour was mounting and fading again in her face. She looked over for a moment at her affianced husband, and he could see the exaltation that burned in her eyes, suggesting to him more than ever the idea of martyrdom. That sexless exaltation divided her from him too. He shifted from foot to foot and a smouldering anger was in him. It grew as he noticed that, though the other three wore boots and stockings, she had slipped her feet into a pair of shoes only and her bare ankles could be seen under her stuff petticoat. Heber's eyes, which looked dark indeed, were set on her, and, as Saunders suddenly perceived him among the trees, the anger kindled in him like a flame.