The Breaking Point | Page 3

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The Breaking Point
by Mary Roberts Rinehart

I
"Heaven and earth," sang the tenor, Mr. Henry Wallace, owner of the
Wallace garage. His larynx, which gave him somewhat the effect of
having swallowed a crab-apple and got it only part way down,

protruded above his low collar.
"Heaven and earth," sang the bass, Mr. Edwin Goodno, of the meat
market and the Boy Scouts. "Heaven and earth, are full--" His chin,
large and fleshy, buried itself deep; his eyes were glued on the music
sheet in his hand.
"Are full, are full, are full," sang the soprano, Clare Rossiter, of the
yellow colonial house on the Ridgely Road. She sang with her eyes
turned up, and as she reached G flat she lifted herself on her toes. "Of
the majesty, of Thy glory."
"Ready," barked the choir master. "Full now, and all together."
The choir room in the parish house resounded to the twenty voices of
the choir. The choir master at the piano kept time with his head.
Earnest and intent, they filled the building with the Festival Te Deum
of Dudley Buck, Opus 63, No.1.
Elizabeth Wheeler liked choir practice. She liked the way in which,
after the different parts had been run through, the voices finally blended
into harmony and beauty. She liked the small sense of achievement it
gave her, and of being a part, on Sundays, of the service. She liked the
feeling, when she put on the black cassock and white surplice and the
small round velvet cap of having placed in her locker the things of this
world, such as a rose-colored hat and a blue georgette frock, and of
being stripped, as it were, for aspirations.
At such times she had vague dreams of renunciation. She saw herself
cloistered in some quiet spot, withdrawn from the world; a place where
there were long vistas of pillars and Gothic arches, after a photograph
in the living room at home, and a great organ somewhere, playing.
She would go home from church, however, clad in the rose-colored hat
and the blue georgette frock, and eat a healthy Sunday luncheon; and
by two o'clock in the afternoon, when the family slept and Jim had
gone to the country club, her dreams were quite likely to be entirely
different. Generally speaking, they had to do with love. Romantic,

unclouded young love dramatic only because it was love, and very
happy.
Sometime, perhaps, some one would come and say he loved her. That
was all. That was at once the beginning and the end. Her dreams led up
to that and stopped. Not by so much as a hand clasp did they pass that
wall.
So she sat in the choir room and awaited her turn.
"Altos a little stronger, please."
"Of the majesty, of the majesty, of the majesty, of Thy gl-o-o-ry," sang
Elizabeth. And was at once a nun and a principal in a sentimental
dream of two.
What appeared to the eye was a small and rather ethereal figure with
sleek brown hair and wistful eyes; nice eyes, of no particular color.
Pretty with the beauty of youth, sensitive and thoughtful, infinitely
loyal and capable of suffering and not otherwise extraordinary was
Elizabeth Wheeler in her plain wooden chair. A figure suggestive of no
drama and certainly of no tragedy, its attitude expectant and waiting,
with that alternate hope and fear which is youth at twenty, when all of
life lies ahead and every to-morrow may hold some great adventure.
Clare Rossiter walked home that night with Elizabeth. She was a tall
blonde girl, lithe and graceful, and with a calculated coquetry in her