The Equations of Love by Ethel Wilson Page A

to pull the other in opposite directions. Mort seemed to try to urge Eddie back along Powell Street in the direction – but Vicky could not know this – of the Regal Rooms. But Eddie was stronger and, being drunk, was impervious to argument, and so he prevailed over Mort who seemed to give up arguing, and Vicky saw the two men, Mort sober supporting Eddie drunk, continue an uncertain course down Powell Street. Naturally she did not know that they were going down to the dock in order to satisfy Eddie about his suitcase, but that was where they were going. Then she could no longer distinguish, across the misty drizzly street, the figures of Mort and his friend among the other people, so she went on her way, hurrying a little, to St. James Church.
    St. James Church is a noble grey building, non-Gothic, perhaps neo-Byzantine, which stands staunchly on the corner of East Cordova Street and of Gore Avenue which runs down to the near waterfront. Although not lofty, the church risesabove the surrounding shabby wooden buildings of the East End, and, higher still, holds up against the sky an aery cross. The parish, whose name the church bears, once extended all the way up the coast and back into the hinterland. Now the church serves, in the East End, many people from all parts of the city of Vancouver. The church is flanked by two ancillary buildings of faintly Tudor dignity, which are not incongruous, but are complementary to the sturdy architecture of the church itself. Kitty-corner from the church is the Police Station through which are sieved many of the major and minor crimes of the city, and where dramas – ultimate, penultimate and ante-penultimate – fuse, coalesce, absorb, resolve or do not resolve, and disappear, giving place to others. The Police Station exhales a breath peculiar to itself. The church building dominates the Police Station building, and the aery cross rises above all; but the cross is not seen as often as you would think by people who continually pass by, and who look about or within themselves thinking of other matters. Church and Police Station face each other obliquely, and serve the people of the city.
    Vicky hurried up the steps of the church, and, avoiding the welcome of a sidesman but accepting the hymn book and prayer book which he held out to her, she took her seat in the very back pew against the wall. She dropped upon her knees. This performance was physical, not mental although perhaps spiritual (who could divine?), and, having conformed, she looked before her with satisfaction at the focus of the grey church, at the altar.
    The church, although barren of ornament, is not barren of beauty. It is cool, with a lovely austerity. There are six tall shining candlesticks at the altar. The candles are lighted. Seven small shining lamps hang suspended, their length of suspensionforming pleasing curves which the eye follows gratefully and again follows. The shining lamps and their small ruby-shaded flames canalize the thought, the prayer, the dream. Then there is the large suspended crucifix, again aery; two plain pulpits; nothing more. The music accords with this, in pure and sweet enunciation. The services are ceremonial and also informal; man speaks to man; man listens; God speaks to man through man in easy words that Vicky can understand, although she does not always listen; but she dreams, her eyes following the line of the suspended ruby flames of the seven shining lamps – up, down, up, down, up, down, up. Vicky does not know what all the short ceremonial of the service signifies, but it satisfies her, and she is aware, quite humbly, that it signifies something, or Father Whitehead would not perform it.
    On the evening when Vicky took her place, anonymous, almost invisible, in the very back pew against the wall, Father Cooper came down from the pulpit and stood amongst the people and talked to them. “Blessed,” he said, “are the meek,” and then he went on to talk about the real meaning of