The charm of the little towns of Northern France is very difficult to imprison on paper. It is not exactly that they are old, although there is scarcely one which has not a church or a chateau or a quaint medieval street worth coming far to see; nor that they are particularly picturesque, for the ground is fairly flat, and they are all but always set among the fields, since it is by agriculture far more than by manufacture that they live. But they are clean and cheerful; one thinks of them under the sun; and they are very homely. In them the folk smile simply at you, but not inquisitively as in England, for each bustles gaily about his own affairs, and will let you do what you please, with a shrug of the shoulders. Abbeville is very typical of all this. It has its church, and from the bridge over the Somme the backs of ancient houses can be seen leaning half over the river, which has sung beneath them for five hundred years; and it is set in the midst of memories of stirring days. Yet it is not for these that one would revisit the little town, but rather that one might walk by the still canal under the high trees in spring, or loiter in the market-place round what the Hun has left of the statue of the famous Admiral with his attendant nymphs, or wander down the winding streets that skirt the ancient church and give glimpses of its unfinished tower.

Peter found it very good to be there in the days that followed the death of Jenks. True, it was now nearer to the seat of war than it had been for years, and air-raids began to be common, but in a sense the sound of the guns fitted in with his mood. So great a battle was being fought within him that the world could not in any case have seemed wholly at peace, and yet in the quiet fields, or sauntering of an afternoon by the river, he found it easier than at Havre to think. Langton was almost his sole companion, and a considerable intimacy had grown up between them. Peter found that his friend seemed to understand a great deal of his thoughts without explanation. He neither condoled nor exhorted; rather he watched with an almost shy interest the other’s inward battle.

They lodged at the Hotel de l’Angleterre, that hostelry in the street that leads up and out of the town towards Saint Riquier, which you enter from a courtyard that opens on the road and has rooms that you reach by means of narrow, rickety flights of stairs and balconies overhanging the court. The big dining-room wore an air of gloomy festivity. Its chandeliers swathed in brown paper, its faded paint, and its covered upholstery, suggested that it awaited a day yet to be when it should blossom forth once more in glory as in the days of old. Till then it was as merry as it could be. Its little tables filled up of an evening with the new cosmopolitan population of the town, and old Jacques bustled round with the good wine, and dropped no hint that the choice brands were nearly at an end in the cellar.

Peter and Langton would have their war-time apology for petit dejeuner in bed or alone. Peter, as a rule, was up early, and used to wander out a little and sometimes into church, coming back to coffee as good as ever, but war-time bread instead of rolls on a small table under a low balcony in the courtyard if it were fine. He would linger over it, and have chance conversation with passing strangers of all sorts, from clerical personages belonging to the Church Army or the Y.M.C.A. to officers who came and went usually on unrevealed affairs. Then Langton would come down, and they would stroll round to the newly-fitted-up office which had been prepared for the lecture campaign and glance at maps of districts, and exchange news with the officer in charge, who, having done all he could, had now nothing to do but stand by and wait for the next move from a War Office that had either forgotten his existence or discovered some hitch in its plans. They had a couple of lectures from people who were alleged to know all about such topics as the food shortage at home or the new plans for housing, but who invariably turned out to be waiting themselves for the precise information that was necessary for successful lectures. After such they would stroll out through the town into the fields, and Langton would criticise the thing in lurid but humorous language, and they would come back to the club and sit or read till lunch.

The club was one of the best in France, it was an old house with lovely furniture, and not too much of it, which stood well back from the street and boasted an old-fashioned garden of shady trees and spring flowers and green lawns. Peter could both read and write in its rooms, and it was there that he finally wrote to Hilda, but not until after much thought.

After his day with Julie at Caudebec one might have supposed that there was nothing left for him to do but break off his engagement to Hilda. But it did not strike him so. For one thing, he was not engaged to Julie or anything like it, and he could not imagine such a situation, even if Julie had not positively repudiated any desire to be either engaged or married. He had certainly declared, in a fit of enthusiasm, that he loved her, but he had not asked if she loved him. He had seen her since, but although they were very good friends, nothing more exciting had passed between them. Peter was conscious that when he was with Julie she fascinated him, but that when he was away ah! that was it, when he was away? It certainly was not that Hilda came back and took her place; it was rather that the other things in his mind dominated him. It was a curious state of affairs. He was less like an orthodox parson than he had ever been, and yet he had never thought so much about religion. He agonised over it now. At times his thoughts were almost more than he could bear.

It came, then, to this, that he had not so much changed towards Hilda as changed towards life. Whether he had really fundamentally changed in such a way that a break with the old was inevitable he did not know. Till then Hilda was part of the old, and if he went back to it she naturally took her old place in it. If he did not well, there he invariably came to the end of thought. Curiously enough, it was when faced with a mental blank that Julie’s image began to rise in his mind. If he admitted her, he found himself abandoning himself to her. He felt sometimes that if he could but take her in his arms he could let the world go by, and God with it. Her kisses were at least a reality. There was neither convention nor subterfuge nor divided allegiance there. She was passion, naked and unashamed, and at least real.

And then he would remember that much of this was problematical after all, for they had never kissed as that passion demanded, or at least that he had never so kissed her. He was not sure of the first. He knew that he did not understand Julie, but he felt, if he did kiss her, it would be a kiss of surrender, of finality. He feared to look beyond that, and he could not if he would.

He wrote, then, to Hilda, and he told of the death of Jenks, and of their arrival in Abbeville, “You must understand, dear,” he said, “that all this has had a tremendous effect upon me. In that train all that I had begun to feel about the uselessness of my old religion came to a head. I could do no more for that soul than light a cigarette.... Possibly no one could have done any more, but I cannot, I will not believe it. Jenks was not fundamentally evil, or at least I don’t think so. He was rather a selfish fool who had no control, that is all. He did not serve the devil; it was much more that he had never seen any master to serve. And I could do nothing. I had no master to show him.

“You may say that that is absurd: that Christ is my Master, and I could have shown Him. Hilda, so He is: I cling passionately to that. But listen: I can’t express Him, I don’t understand Him. I no longer feel that He was animating and ordering the form of religion I administered. It is not that I feel Anglicanism to be untrue, and something else say Wesleyanism to be true; it is much more that I feel them all to be out of touch with reality. That’s it. I don’t think you can possibly see it, but that is the main trouble.

“That, too, brings me to my next point, and this I find harder still to express. I want you to realise that I feel as if I had never seen life before. I feel as if I had been shown all my days a certain number of pictures and told that they were the real thing, or given certain descriptions and told that they were true. I had always accepted that they were. But, Hilda, they are not. Wickedness is not wicked in the way that I was told it was wicked, and what I was told was salvation is not the salvation men and women want. I have been playing in a fool’s paradise all these years, and I’ve got outside the gate. I am distressed and terrified, I think, but underneath it all I am very glad....

“You will say, ‘What are you going to do?’ and I can only reply, I don’t know. I’m not going to make any vast change, if you mean that. A padre I am, and a padre I shall stay for the war at least, and none of us can see beyond that at present. But what I do mean to do is just this: I mean to try and get down to reality myself and try to weigh it up. I am going to eat and drink with publicans and sinners; maybe I shall find my Master still there.”

Peter stopped and looked up. Langton was stretched out in a chair beside him, reading a novel, a pipe in his mouth. Moved by an impulse, he interrupted him.

“Old man,” he said, “I want you to let me read you a bit of this letter. It’s to my girl, but there’s nothing rotten in reading it. May I?”

Langton did not move. “Carry on,” he said shortly.

Peter finished and put down the sheet. The other smoked placidly and said nothing. “Well?” demanded Peter impatiently.

“I should cut out that last sentence,” pronounced the judge.

“Why? It’s true.”

“Maybe, but it isn’t pretty.”

“Langton,” burst out Peter, “I’m sick of prettinesses! I’ve been stuffed up with them all my life, and so has she. I want to break with them.”

“Very likely, and I don’t say that it won’t be the best thing for you to try for a little to do so, but she hasn’t been where you’ve been or seen what you’ve seen. You can’t expect her wholly to understand. And more than that, maybe she is meant for prettinesses. After all, they’re pretty.”

Peter stabbed the blotting-paper with his pen. “Then she isn’t meant for me,” he said.

“I’m not so sure,” said Langton. “I don’t know that you’ve stuff enough in you to get on without those same prettinesses yourself. Most of us haven’t. And at any rate I wouldn’t burn my boats yet awhile. You may want to escape yet.”

Peter considered this in silence. Then he drew the sheets to him and added a few more words, folded the paper, put it in the envelope, and stuck it down. “Come on,” he said, “let’s go and post this and have a walk.”

Langton got up and looked at him curiously, as he sometimes did. “Peter,” he said, “you’re a weird blighter, but there’s something damned gritty in you. You take life too strenuously. Why can’t you saunter through it like I do?”

Peter reached for this cap. “Come on,” he said again, “and don’t talk rot.”

Out in the street, they strolled aimlessly on, more or less in silence. The big book-shop at the corner detained them for a little, and they regarded its variegated contents through the glass. It contained a few good prints, and many more poorly executed coloured pictures of ruined places in France and Belgium, of which a few, however, were not bad. Cheek by jowl with some religious works, a statue of Notre Dame d’Albert, and some more of Jeanne d’Arc, were a line of pornographic novels and beyond packets of picture post-cards entitled Theatreuses, Le Bain de la Parisienne, Les Seins des Marbre, and so on. Then Langton drew Graham’s attention to one or two other books, one of which had a gaudy cover representing a mistress with a birch-rod in her hands and a number of canes hung up beside her, while a girl of fifteen or so, with very red cheeks, was apparently about to be whipped. “Good Lord,” said Langton, “the French are beyond me. This window is a study for you, Graham, in itself. I should take it that it means that there is nothing real in life. It is utterly cynical.

“’And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press,
End in what All begins and ends in Yes;
Think then you are To-day what Yesterday
You were To-morrow you shall not be less,’”

he quoted.

“Yes,” said Peter. “Or else it means that there are only two realities, and that the excellent person who keeps this establishment regards both in a detached way, and conceives it her business to cater for each. Let’s go on.”

They turned the corner, and presently found themselves outside the famous carven door of the church. “Have you ever been round?” asked Peter.

“No,” said Langton; “let’s go in.”

They passed through the door into the old church, which, in contrast to that at Le Havre, was bathed in the daylight that streamed through many clear windows. Together they wandered round it, saying little. They inspected an eighteenth-century statue of St. Roch, who was pulling up his robe to expose a wound and looking upwards at the same time seraphically or, at least, after the manner that the artist of that age had regarded as seraphic. A number of white ribbons and some wax figures of feet and hands and other parts of the body were tied to him. They stood before a wonderful coloured alabaster reredos of the fourteenth century, in which shepherds and kings and beasts came to worship at the manger. They had a little conversation as to the architectural periods of the nave, choir, and transepts, and Langton was enthusiastic over a noble pillar and arch. Beyond they gazed in silence at a statue of Our Lady Immaculate in modern coloured plaster, so arranged that the daylight fell through an unseen opening upon her. Among the objects in front were a pair of Renaissance candlesticks of great beauty. A French officer came up and arranged and lit a votive candle as they watched, and then went back to stand in silence by a pillar. The church door banged and two peasants came in, one obviously from the market, with a huge basket of carrots and cabbages and some long, thin French loaves. She deposited this just inside the door, took holy water, clattered up towards the high altar, dropped a curtsy, and made her way to an altar of the Sacred Heart, at which she knelt. Peter sighed. “Come on,” he said; “let’s get out.”

Langton marched on before him, and held the door back as they stepped into the street. “Well, philosopher,” he demanded, “what do you make of that?”

Peter smiled. “What do you?” he said.

“Well,” said Langton, “it leaves me unmoved, except when I’m annoyed by the way their wretched images spoil the church, but it is plain that they like it. I should say one of your two realities is there. But I find it hard to forgive the bad art.”

“Do you?” said Peter, “I don’t. It reminds me of those appalling enlargements of family groups that you see, for example, in any Yorkshire cottage. They are unutterably hideous, but they stand for a real thing that is honest and beautiful the love of home and family. And by the same token, when the photographs got exchanged, as they do in Mayfair, for modern French pictures of nude women, or some incredible Futurist extravagance, that love has usually flown out of the window.”

“Humph!” said Langton “not always. Besides, why can’t a family group be made artistically, and so keep both art and love? I should think we ought to aim at that.”

“I suppose we ought,” said Peter, “but in our age the two don’t seem to go together. Goodness alone knows why. Why, hullo!” he broke off.

“What’s up now?” demanded Langton.

“Why, there, across the street, if that isn’t a nurse I know from Havre, I don’t know who it is. Wait a tick.”

He crossed the road, and saw, as he got near, that it was indeed Julie. He came up behind her as she examined a shop-window. “By all that’s wonderful, what are you doing here?” he asked.

She turned quickly, her eyes dancing. “I wondered if I should meet you,” she said. “You see, your letter told me you were coming here, but I haven’t heard from you since you came, and I didn’t know if you had started your tour or not. I came simply enough. There’s a big South African hospital here, and we had to send up a batch of men by motor. As they knew I was from South Africa, they gave me the chance to come with them.”

“Well, I am glad,” said Peter, devouring the sight of her. “Wait a minute; I must introduce you to Langton. He and I are together, and he’s a jolly good chap.”

He turned and beckoned Langton, who came over and was introduced. They walked up the street a little way together. “Where are you going now?” asked Peter.

“Back to the hospital,” said Julie. “A car starts from the square at twelve-forty-five, and I have to be in for lunch.”

“Have you much to do up there?” asked Peter.

“Oh no,” she said, “my job’s done. I clear off the day after to-morrow. We only got in last night, so I get a couple of days’ holiday. What are you doing? You don’t look any too busy.”

Peter glanced across at Langton and laughed. “We aren’t,” he said. “The whole stunt’s a wash-out, if you ask me, and we’re really expecting to be sent back any day. There’s too much doing now for lectures. Is the hospital full?”

“Packed,” said Julie gravely. “The papers say we’re falling back steadily so as not to lose men, but the facts don’t bear it out. We’re crammed out. It’s ghastly; I’ve never known it so bad.”

Peter had hardly ever seen her grave before, and her face showed a new aspect of her. He felt a glow of warmth steal over him. “I say,” he said, “couldn’t you dine with us to-night? We’re at the Angleterre, and its tremendously respectable.”

She laughed, her gravity vanishing in a minute. “I must say,” she said, “that I’d love to see you anywhere really respectable. He’s a terrible person for a padre don’t you think so, Captain Langton?”

“Terrible,” said Langton. “But really the Angleterre is quite proper. You don’t get any too bad a dinner, either. Do come, Miss Gamelyn.”

She appeared to consider. “I might manage it,” she said at last, stopping just short of entering the square; “but I haven’t the nerve to burst in and ask for you. Nor will it do for you to see me all the way to that car, or we shall have a dozen girls talking. If you will meet me somewhere,” she added, looking at Peter, “I’ll risk it. I’ll have a headache and not go to first dinner; then the first will think I’m at the second, and the second at the first. Besides, I’ve no duty, and the hospital’s not like Havre. It’s all spread out in huts and tents, and it’s easy enough to get in. Last, but not least, it’s Colonial, and the matron is a brick. Yes, I’ll come.”

“Hurrah!” said Peter. “I tell you what: I’ll meet you at the cross-roads below the hospital and bring you on. Will that do? What time? Five-thirty?”

“Heavens! do you dine at five-thirty?” demanded Julie.

“Well, not quite, but we’ve got to get down,” said Peter, laughing.

“All right,” said Julie, “five-thirty, and the saints preserve us. Look here, I shall chance it and come in mufti if possible. No one knows me here.”

“Splendid!” said Peter. “Good-bye, five-thirty.”

“Good-bye,” said Langton; “we’ll go and arrange our menu.”

“There must be champagne,” called Julie merrily over her shoulder, and catching his eye.

The two men watched her make for the car across the sunlit square, then they strolled round it towards a cafe. “Come on,” said Langton; “let’s have an appetiser.”

From the little marble-topped table Peter watched the car drive away. Julie was laughing over something with another girl. It seemed to conclude the morning, somehow. He raised his glass and looked at Langton. “Well,” he said, “here’s to reality, wherever it is.”

“And here’s to getting along without too much of it,” said Langton, smiling at him.

The dinner was a great success at least, in the beginning. Julie wore a frock of some soft brown stuff, and Peter could hardly keep his eyes off her. He had never seen her out of uniform before, and although she was gay enough, she said and did nothing very exciting. If Hilda had been there she need hardly have behaved differently, and for a while Peter was wholly delighted. Then it began to dawn on him that she was playing up to Langton, and that set in train irritating thoughts. He watched the other jealously, and noticed how the girl drew him out to speak of his travels, and how excellently he did it, leaning back at coffee with his cigarette, polite, pleasant, attractive. Julie, who usually smoked cigarette after cigarette furiously, only, however, getting through about half of each, now refused a second, and glanced at the clock about 8.30.

“Oh,” she said, “I must go.”

Peter remonstrated. “If you can stay out later at Havre,” he said, “why not here?”

She laughed lightly. “I’m reforming,” she said, “in the absence of bad companions. Besides, they are used to my being later at Havre, but here I might be spotted, and then there would be trouble. Would you fetch my coat, Captain Graham?”

Peter went obediently, and they all three moved out into the court.

“Come along and see her home, Langton,” he said, though he hardly knew why he included the other.

“Thanks,” said his friend; “but if Miss Gamelyn will excuse me, I ought not. I’ve got some reading I must do for to-morrow, and I want to write a letter or two as well. You’ll be an admirable escort, Graham.”

“Good-night,” said Julie, holding out her hand; “perhaps we shall meet again some time. One is always running up against people in France. And thank you so much for your share of the entertainment.”

In a few seconds Peter and she were outside. The street was much darkened, and there was no moon. They walked in silence for a little. Suddenly he stopped. “Wouldn’t you like a cab?” he said; “we might be able to get one.”

Julie laughed mischievously, and Peter gave a little start in the dark. It struck him that this was the old laugh and that he had not heard it that night before. “It’s convenient, of course,” she said mockingly. “Do get one by all means. But last time I came home with you in a cab, you let me finish alone. I thought that was to be an invariable rule.”

“Oh, don’t Julie,” said Peter.

Her tone changed. “Why not?” she demanded. “Solomon, what’s made you so glum to-night? You were cheerful enough when you met me, and when we began; then you got silent. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” he said.

She slipped her hand in his arm. “There is something,” she said. “Do tell me.”

“Do you like Langton?” he asked.

“Oh, immensely why? Oh, Lord, Solomon, what do you mean?”

“You were different in his presence, Julie, from anything you’ve been before.”

They took a few paces in silence; then Peter had an idea, and glanced at her. She was laughing silently to herself. He let her hand fall from his arm, and looked away. He knew he was behaving like an ass, but he could not help it.

She stopped suddenly. “Peter,” she said, “I want to talk to you. Take me somewhere where it’s possible.”

“At this hour of the evening? What about being late?”

She gave a little stamp with her foot, then laughed again. “What a boy it is!” she said. “Don’t you know anywhere to go?”

Peter hesitated; then he made up his mind. There was an hotel he knew of, out of the main street, of none too good a reputation. Some men had taken Langton and him there, once, in the afternoon, between the hours in which drinks were legally sold, and they had gone through the hall into a little back-room that was apparently partly a sitting-room, partly part of the private rooms of the landlord, and had been served there. He recalled the description of one of the men: “It’s a place to know. You can always get a drink, and take in anyone you please.”

“Come on, then,” he said, and turned down a back-street.

“Where in the world are you taking me?” demanded Julie. “I shall have no reputation left if this gets out.”

“Nor shall I,” said Peter.

“Nor you will; what a spree! Do you think it’s worth it, Peter?”

Under a shaded lamp they were passing at the moment, he glanced at her, and his pulses raced! “Good God, Julie!” he said, “you could do anything with me.”

She chuckled with laughter, her brown eyes dancing. “Maybe,” she said, “but I’m out to talk to you for your good now.”

They turned another corner, into an old street, and under an arch. Peter walked forward to the hotel entrance, and entered. There was a woman in the office, who glanced up, and looked, first at Peter, then at Julie. On seeing her behind him, she came forward. “What can I do for monsieur?” she asked.

“Good-evening, madame,” said Peter. “I was here the other day. Give us a bottle of wine in that little room at the back, will you?”

“Why, certainly, monsieur,” said she. “Will madame follow me? It is this way.”

She opened, the door, and switched on the light, “Shall I light the fire, madame?” she demanded.

Julie beamed on her. “Ah, yes; that would be jolly,” she said. “And the wine, madame Beaune.”

The woman smiled and bowed. “Let madame but seat herself and it shall come,” she said, and went out.

Julie took off her hat, and walked to the glass, patting her hair. “Give me a cigarette, my dear,” she said. “It was jolly hard only to smoke one to-night.”

Peter opened and handed her his case in silence, then pulled up a big chair. There was a knock at the door, and a girl came in with the wine and glasses, which she set on the table, and, then knelt down to light the fire. She withdrew and shut the door. They were alone.

Peter was still standing. Julie glanced at him, and pointed to a chair opposite. “Give me a drink, and then go and sit there,” she said.

He obeyed. She pulled her skirts up high to the blaze and pushed one foot out to the logs, and sat there, provocative, sipping her wine and puffing little puffs of smoke from her cigarette. “Now, then,” she said, “what did I do wrong to-night?”

Peter was horribly uncomfortable. He felt how little he knew this girl, and he felt also how much he loved her.

“Nothing, dear,” he said; “I was a beast.”

“Well,” she said, “if you won’t tell me, I’ll tell you. I was quite proper to-night, immensely and intensely proper, and you didn’t like it. You had never seen me so. You thought, too, that I was making up to your friend. Isn’t that so?”

Peter nodded. He marvelled that she should know so well, and he wondered what was coming.

“I wonder what you really think of me, Peter,” she went on. “I suppose you think I never can be serious no, I won’t say serious conventional. But you’re very stupid; we all of us can be, and must be sometimes. You asked me just now what I thought of your friend well, I’ll tell you. He is as different from you as possible. He has his thoughts, no doubt, but he prefers to be very tidy. He takes refuge in the things you throw overboard. He’s not at all my sort, and he’s not yours either, in a way. Goodness knows what will happen to either of us, but he’ll be Captain Langton to the end of his days. I envy that sort of person intensely, and when I meet him I put on armour. See?”

Peter stared at her. “How is he different from Donovan?” he asked.

“Donovan! Oh, Lord, Peter, how dull you are! Donovan has hardly a thought in his head about anything except Donovan. He was born a jolly good sort, and he’s sampled pretty well everything. He’s cool as a cucumber, though he has his passions like everyone else. If you keep your head, you can say or do anything with Donovan. But Langton is deliberate. He knows about things, and he refuses and chooses. I didn’t want ...” She broke off. “Peter,” she said savagely, “in two minutes that man would know more about me than you do, if I let him.”

He had never seen her so. The childish brown eyes had a look in them that reminded him of an animal caught in a trap. He sprang up and dropped on his knees by her side, catching her hand.

“Oh, Julie, don’t,” he said. “What do you mean? What is there about you that I don’t know? How are you different from either of them?”

She threw her cigarette away, and ran her fingers through his hair, then made a gesture, almost as if pushing something away, Peter thought, and laughed her old ringing trill of laughter.

“Lor’, Peter, was I tragic? I didn’t mean to be, my dear. There’s a lot about me that you don’t know, but something that you’ve guessed. I can’t abide shams and conventions really. Let’s have life, I say, whatever it is. Heavens! I’ve seen street girls with more in them than I pretended to your friend to have in me to-night. They at least deal with human nature in the raw. But that’s why I love you; there’s no need to pretend to you, partly because, at bottom, you like real things as much as I, and partly because oh, never mind.”

“Julie, I do mind tell me,” he insisted.

Her face changed again. “Not now, Peter,” she said. “Perhaps one day who can say? Meantime, go on liking me, will you?”

“Like you!” he exclaimed, springing up, “Why, I adore you! I love you! Oh, Julie, I love you! Kiss me, darling, now, quick!”

She pushed him off. “Not now,” she cried; “I’ve got to have my revenge. I know why you wouldn’t come home in the cab! Come! we’ll clink glasses, but that’s all there is to be done to-night!” She sprang up, flushed and glowing, and held out an empty glass.

Peter filled hers and his, and they stood opposite to each other. She looked across the wine at him, and it seemed to him that he read a longing and a passion in her eyes, deep down below the merriness that was there now. “Cheerio, old boy,” she said, raising hers. “And ’here’s to the day when your big boots and my little shoes lie outside the same closed door!’”

“Julie!” he said, “you don’t mean it!”

“Don’t I? How do you know, old sober-sides. Come, buck up, Solomon; we’ve been sentimental long enough. I’d like to go to a music-hall now or do a skirt-dance. But neither’s really possible; certainly not the first, and you’d be shocked at the second. I’m half a mind to shock you, though, only my skirt’s not long and wide enough, and I’ve not enough lace underneath. I’ll spare you. Come on!”

She seized her hat and put it on. They went out into the hall. There was a man in uniform there, at the office, and a girl, French and unmistakable, who glanced at Julie, and then turned away. Julie nodded to madame, and did not glance at the man, but as she passed the girl she said distinctly, “Bon soir, mademoiselle.” The girl started and turned towards her. Julie smiled sweetly and passed on.

Peter took her arm in the street, for it was quite dark and deserted.

“Why did you do that?” he said.

“What?” she demanded.

“Speak to that girl. You know what she is?”

“I do a poor devil that’s playing with Fate for the sake of a laugh and a bit of ribbon. I’m jolly sorry for her, for they are both worth a great deal, and it’s hard to be cheated into thinking you’ve got them when Fate is really winning the deal. And I saw her face before she turned away. Why do you think she turned away, Peter? Not because she was ashamed, but because she is beginning to know that Fate wins. Oh, la! la! what a world! Let’s be more cheerful. ’There’s a long, long trail a-winding.’” she hummed.

Peter laughed. “Oh, my dear,” he said, “was there ever anyone like you?”

Langton was reading in his room when Peter looked in to say good-night.

“Hullo!” he said. “See her home?”

“Yes,” said Peter. “What did you think of her?”

“She’s fathoms deep, I should say. But I should take care if I were you, my boy. It’s all very well to eat and drink with publicans and sinners, though, as I told you, it’s better no one should know. But they are dangerous company.”

“Why especially?” demanded Peter.

Langton stretched himself. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Perhaps because society’s agin ’em.”

“Look here, Langton,” said Peter. “Do you hear what I say? Damn society! Besides, do you think your description applies to that girl?”

Langton smiled. “No,” he said, “I shouldn’t think so, but she’s not your sort, Peter. When you take that tunic off, you’ve got to put on a black coat. Whatever conclusions you come to, don’t forget that.”

“Have I?” said Peter; “I wonder.”

Langton got up. “Of course you have,” he said. “Life’s a bit of a farce, but one’s got to play it. See here, I believe in facing facts and getting one’s eyes open, but not in making oneself a fool. Nothing’s worth that.”

“Isn’t it?” said Peter; and again, “I wonder.”

“Well, I don’t, and at any rate I’m for bed. Good-night.”

“Good-night,” said Peter; “I’m off too. But I don’t agree with you. I’m inclined to think exactly the opposite that anything worth having is worth making oneself a fool over. What is a fool, anyway? Good-night.”

He closed the door, and Langton walked over to the window to open it. He stood there a few minutes listening to the silence. Then a cock crew somewhere, and was answered far away by another. “Yes,” said Langton to himself, “what is a fool, anyway?”