Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/128

 which she read to the end. Presently she put out the candles, undressed, and finally extinguished her own light.

She was of an age which usually sleeps soundly, yet to-night she kept waking up, and every time she opened her eyes there was enough diffused light from the window to show her the white plaster figures, standing on the chest of drawers in odd contrast to their environment of text and martyr, and the Gothic-framed symbol picture of what was only discernible now as a Latin cross, the figure thereon being obscured by the shades.

On one of these occasions the church clocks struck some small hour. It fell upon the ears of another person, who sat bending over his books at a not very distant spot in the same city. Being Saturday night, the morrow was one on which Jude had not set his alarm-clock to call him at his usually early time, and hence he had stayed up, as was his custom, two or three hours later than he could afford to do on any other day of the week. Just then he was earnestly reading from his Griesbach's text. At the very time that Sue was reading, the policeman and belated citizens passing along under his window might have heard, if they had stood still, strange syllables mumbled with fervor within—words that had for Jude an indescribable enchantment; inexplicable sounds something like these:

"All hemin eis Theos ho Pater, ex ou ta panta, kai hemeis eis auton:"

Till the sounds rolled with reverent loudness, as a book was heard to close:

"Kai eis Kurios Iesous Christos, di ou ta panta kai hemeis di autou!"