OCR Text |
Show 228 between them, and Lorin responded to the whispers in his ear by whispering back into the temple worker's ear. The veil was pushed aside, the Patriarchal Grip was exchanged, and Lorin passed through into a corridor behind several elders who had just finished ahead of him. He entered a room filled with yellow pastel chairs and couches, glittering chandeliers, elaborate molding with gold leaf and a great variety of mirrors on the walls. He was startled to see himself for the first time in his white clothes with the strange hat. To hide his nervousness he looked around for somebody he knew among the milling elders, who had nothing more to do now than wait for everyone behind them to finish so they could all leave. He saw Elder Norton, another of his roommates, standing by a lamp with a carved wooden base. Lorin had noticed that everyone seemed under the kind of tension that caused fits of hysterical giggles among grown men, and he was grateful to see a friendly face. He approached Norton, extending a hand. "Guess what they told me my name is," he said. "David. Just David." He was about to josh about being disappointed it wasn't something like Mahonri Moriancumer but was stopped by the look on Norton's face. "You're not supposed to tell anybody that, you dumb ass!" Lorin looked around, hoping nobody else had heard. One or two elders on the other side of a couch were looking at him curiously, but they were too far away to have heard. They were probably looking at him because he was older than anybody else in the room. He was not sure, then, when at last he found himself in that distant northern vineyard to pluck heathens from the vine, that something funny had not happened deep inside his brain. It worried him that though he hated what he was doing he nevertheless did not miss painting at all. Sometimes he would unbend to Sorenson, who seemed to have fewer anxieties than |