On Sunday she received a series of sensations. She believed such elemental doctrines as she had received at her mother’s knee: in a beautiful heaven and a fearful hell, in Christ and the angels--she was not quite certain about the Virgin Mary--in the Lord’s Prayer, which she said every night at her bedside, and in the goodness of going to church. Her religion might have been that of a bird of the air for all the shackles it laid upon her soul. But the outer forms of worship impressed her strongly--church music, solemn silences, vestments, stained windows, even words. She felt very solemn when she called her innocent self a “miserable sinner” in the Litany, and the word “Sabbaoth,” in the “Te Deum,” always seemed fraught with mystic meaning. The symbolic hushed her into awe. Even the surplices of the choir-boys set them apart for the moment, in her mind, from the baser sort of urchins. And, _a fortiori_, the clergyman, in surplice and stole, had always appealed to her childish imagination as a being that moved in an especial odour of sanctity. It is fair to add that Yvonne’s church-going had never been as regular as might have been desired, so these reverential feelings had not been staled by custom. However, when the Canon appeared at the reading-desk, and his fine voice rang through the Abbey, Yvonne felt a sudden pang of alarm. The night before he had been so tender and playful that he had almost seemed to be upon her level. And now, he was far, far away. The distance between her, poor, insignificant little Yvonne, and him performing his sacred office, appeared immeasurably vast. And when he mounted the pulpit, her awe grew greater. She could not realise that he was her affianced husband. He preached on the text from the story of Nicodemus, “Except a man be born again.” The words caught her fancy as being apposite to her own case, and, disregarding the thread of the Canon’s discourse, she preached a little sermon to herself. She was going to be born again. Yvonne the singer would die, and a new, regenerate Yvonne, the lady of the Rectory, Mrs. Everard Chisely, would appear in her stead. She caught a phrase in which the Canon touched upon the spiritual pain attending on the death of the old Adam. She wondered whether she would be called upon to suffer the fire of purification. It was like the Phoenix. At this point she pulled herself up short. To mix up the Phoenix and Nicodemus might be profane. So she bestowed her best attention on the remainder of the sermon.