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In the central buildings, five feet above this noisy confluence of people, where the golden images of the Buddhas are enthroned, the mitred priests with their copes of gold-embroidered brown were performing the rituals of their order. To right and left of the high altar, the canons squatting at their red-lacquered praying-desks, were reciting the sutras in strophe and antistrophe.
Unconsciously the girl touched it, and then, as the other woman turned and knelt at one of the worn praying-desks, Brigit hastily touched her own forehead and breast. The drop of water stayed for some seconds on her forehead, and in its coolness seemed to burn her. After a short pause she walked down the aisle and sat down in the second row of seats.
He could not remember ever having been in a synagogue, and yet the praying-desks, the pulpit and the ark for the holy scrolls seemed singularly familiar. He looked up. Yes, there was the latticed gallery filled with women, just as he had expected to find it! The hazan was intoning a prayer. Between the words he interjected a number of strange trills and turns.
A number of tallow candles illumine its recesses. The oron-hakodesh, or ark containing the holy Pentateuch, a shabbily-covered pulpit, or almemor, and a few rough praying-desks for the men, are all that relieve the emptiness of the room. Around one side there runs a gallery, in which the women sit during divine service.
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