"I think I can smell dead bodies," said Jasmine to her companion.
Mr. Vibart was probably not a religious young man himself, but he had already affronted the religious sense of his neighbours by presenting himself before Almighty God in grey flannel trousers and a Norfolk jacket, and he was not anxious positively to flout it by letting Jasmine talk in church. People in the pews close at hand turned round to see what irreverent voice had interrupted their devotion, and Mr. Vibart tried to pretend that her remark had a religious bearing by offering her a share of his Prayer Book. This was too much for Jasmine. To stand up in front of the world holding half a book seemed to her as much an offence against church etiquette as when once long ago at school she had quarrelled with another little girl over the ownership of a rosary and they had tugged against each other until the rosary broke in a shower of tinkling shells upon the floor of the convent chapel.
The best solution of the situation was to go out, and out she went, followed by Mr. Vibart, who looked as uncomfortable as a man would look in leaving a stall in the middle of the row during Madame Butterfly's last song.
"I say, you know, you oughtn't to have done that," he murmured reproachfully.
"Well, talked loudly like that, and then gone out in the middle of the service. Everybody stared at us like anything."
"Well, why did you joke with that Prayer Book?"
"I wasn't joking with the Prayer Book," Mr. Vibart affirmed in horror.
An emotion akin to dismay invaded Jasmine's soul. If she could so completely misunderstand this not at all alarming, this freckled and benevolent young man, how was she ever to understand her English relatives? She had been sufficiently depressed by England throughout the journey, but it was only now that she grasped what a profound difference it was going to make to be herself only half English. She was evidently going to misunderstand everything and everybody. Serious things were going to seem jokes, and, what was worse, real jokes would seem serious. She should offend with and in her turn be offended by trifles.
"I'm sorry," she said to Mr. Vibart. "You see, it was quite different from everything to which I've been accustomed all my life. Oh, do let's go and have an ice."