The flood of words poured on and on over Vance's bent head. He did not want to look at her now: her prophetic gestures, her persuasive smiles, repelled him. Her intonations were unctuous, benedictory; she had become identified with her apostolic role. Behind the swaying surging prophetess he still felt the rich-hearted woman in whose warmth his childhood had unfolded; it was bitter to him that the people about him would never know her as she really was. He was already prepared to hate them for smiling at her rambling periods. He could have smiled at them himself if his heart had been less sore; but no one else should do so. He looked about him suspiciously, trembling to detect derision; but he saw only a somewhat blank expectancy. It was all very well, the faces about him seemed to say; but they had heard that kind of thing before. Something else must surely be coming. This inspired teacher was going to tell them the secret they yearned for. But apparently there was no other secret; nothing came but a crescendo of adjurations to love everybody and everything, to be all love, all Christ-likeness, all God-creativeness… .

Mrs. Scrimser paused. The room was pervaded by the peculiar sense of uncertainty of an audience which has lost touch with the speaker. The silence seemed to ask: What next? Vance knew. Though he had never before heard his grandmother speak in public he had often gone with her to the meetings which she frequented in her incessant quest for new religious sensations, and he knew the exact moment at which the orator's appeal, having reached its culmination, held itself ready for an emotional response. It was the moment when here and there someone stood up and gasped out devout ejaculations; when a hymn burst spontaneously from hundreds of throats; when the listeners fell on their knees in audible prayer.

Nothing of all this happened. Mrs. Scrimser stood motionless. The weight of her heavy body bearing on her outspread palms, as she rested them on the table before her, she watched for the tide of emotion to rise. It did not rise, but the audience did. There was an uncomfortable lull, followed by a discreet rustling of chairs. A "very beautiful," launched by Mrs. Spear from the platform, drifted languidly down the room. A very few of the more determined "Seekers" pressed back against the tide to Mrs. Scrimser; the others, somewhat too hastily, poured through the doors of the dining room toward the glimpse of a buffet supper… . As Vance passed out, he caught sight of Mr. Spear's alert head between two retreating backs, and heard him say in his thin crackling voice: "Isn't there some mistake about this? Seems to me I've met Mrs. Scrimser's God before—and Mrs. Scrimser too."

Chapter 7