Castor came in. He stood for a second, looking at her with a queer, fixed expression in his kindly gray eyes, and then he said, gently, "What is it, Naomi? Did I frighten you?"
In her struggle with the drawer, her hat had slipped to the back of her head and her hair had fallen into disarray. Her pale face was flushed once more.
"No," she said. "I just couldn't get that awful drawer open."
"I'll do it for you."
She couldn't escape now. She couldn't run past him out of the door. It would be too ridiculous. Besides, she had a strange, wicked desire not to escape. She sat down on one of the shabby leather chairs and put her hat straight. The Reverend Castor stooped without a word and gathered up the music, and then, with one hand, he opened the drawer easily. She saw it happen with a chill of horror. It was as if the drawer had betrayed her.
She rose quickly and said, "It really wouldn't open for me. It really wouldn't. . . . I tried and tried." (He would think she had planned it all.)
But when he turned toward her, he said gently, "Yes, I know. It's a funny drawer. It sticks sometimes like that." He was so calm and so . . . usual, she had suddenly, without knowing why, a queer certainty that he understood what was happening there deep inside her, and was trying to still her uneasiness. The knowledge made her want to cry. If only for a second Philip would treat her thus. . . .
He was rubbing his hands together. "Well, that was what I call a real choir practice. We've always needed some one like you, Naomi, to put spirit into
