Peter secured his leave for Monday the 21st from Boulogne, which necessitated his leaving Le Havre at least twenty-four hours before that day. There were two ways of travelling across country in a troop-train, or by French expresses via Paris. He had heard so much of the latter plan that he determined to try it. It had appeared to belong to the reputation of the Church.

His movement order was simply from the one port to the other, and was probably good enough either way round with French officials; but there was a paper attached to it indicating that the personnel in question would report at such a time to the R.T.O. at such a station, and the time and the station spelt troop-train unmistakably. Now, the troop-train set out on its devious journey an hour later than the Paris express from the same station, and the hour of the Paris express corresponded with the time that all decent officers go to dinner. Peter therefore removed the first paper, folded it up thoughtfully, and put it in his pocket. He then reported to the R.T.O. a quarter of an hour before the Paris train started, and found, as he expected, a N.C.O. in sole charge. The man took his paper and read it. He turned it over; there was no indication of route anywhere. “Which train are you going by, sir?” he asked.

“Paris mail,” said Peter coolly. “Will you please put my stuff in a first?”

“Certainly, sir,” said the man, endorsed the order to that effect, and shouldered a suit-case. Peter followed him. He was given a first to himself, and the Deputy R.T.O. saw the French inspector and showed him the paper. Peter strolled off and collected a bottle of wine, some sandwiches, and some newspapers; then he made himself comfortable. The train left punctually. Peter lay back in his corner and watched the country slip by contentedly. He had grown up, had this young man.

He arrived in Paris with the dawn of Sunday morning, and looked out cautiously. There was no English official visible. However, his papers were entirely correct, and he climbed up the stairs and wandered along a corridor in which hands and letters from time to time indicated the lair of the R.T.O. Arriving, he found another officer waiting, but no R.T.O. The other was “bored stiff,” he said; he had sat there an hour, but had seen no sign of the Transport Officer. Peter smiled, and replied that he had no intention whatever of waiting; he only wanted to know the times of the Boulogne trains. These he discovered by the aid of a railway guide on the table, and selected the midnight train, which would land him in Boulogne in time for the first leave-boat, if the train were punctual and the leave-boat not too early. In any case, he could take the second, which would only mean Victoria a few hours later that same day. And these details settled, he left his luggage in a corner and strolled off into the city.

A big city, seen for the first time by oneself alone when one does not know a soul in it, may be intensely boring or intensely interesting. It depends on oneself. Peter was in the mood to be interested. He was introspective. It pleased him to watch the early morning stir; to see the women come out in shawls and slipshod slippers and swill down their bit of pavement; to see sleepy shopkeepers take down their shutters and street-vendors set up their stalls; to try to gauge the thoughts and doings of the place from the shop-windows and the advertisements. His first need was a wash and a shave, and he got both at a little barber’s in which monsieur attended to him, while madame, in considerable negligee, made her toilette before the next glass. His second was breakfast, and he got it, a l’anglaise, with an omelette and jam, in a just-stirring hotel; and then, set up, he strolled off for the centre of things. Many Masses were in progress at the Madeleine, and he heard one or two with a curious contentment, but they had no lesson for him, probably because of the foreign element in the atmosphere, and he did not pray. Still, he sat, chiefly, and watched, until he felt how entirely he was a stranger here, and went out into the sun.

He made his way to the river, and lingered there long. The great cathedral, with its bare January trees silhouetted to the last twig against the clear sky, its massive buttresses, and its cluster of smaller buildings, held his imagination. He went in, but they were beginning to sing Mass, and he soon came out. He crossed to the farther bank and found a seat and lit a pipe. Sitting there, his imagination awoke. He conceived the pageant of faith that had raised those walls. Kings and lords and knights, all the glitter and gold of the Middle Ages, had come there and gone; Bishops and Archbishops, and even Popes, had had their day of splendour there and gone; the humbler sort, in the peasant dress of the period, speaking quaint tongues, had brought their sorrows there and their joys and gone; yet it seemed to him that they had not so surely gone. The great have their individual day and disappear, but the poor, in their corporate indistinguishableness remain. The multitude, petty in their trivial wants and griefs, find no historian and leave no monument. Yet, ultimately, it was because of the Christian faith in the compassion of God for such that Notre-Dame lifted her towers to the sky. The stage for the mighty doings of Kings, it was the home of the people. As he had seen them just now, creeping about the aisles, lighting little tapers, crouched in a corner, so had they always been. Kings and Bishops figured for a moment in pomp before the altar, and then monuments must be erected to their memory. But it was not so with the poor. Peter, in a glow of warmth, considered that he was in truth one of them. And Jesus had had compassion on the multitude, he remembered. The text recalled him, and he frowned to himself.

He knocked out his pipe, and set out leisurely to find luncheon. The famous book-boxes held him, and he bought a print or two. In a restaurant near the Chatelet he got dejeuner, and then, remembering Julie, bought and wrote a picture-postcard, and took a taxi for the Bois. He was driven about for an hour or more, and watched the people lured out by the sun, watched the troops of all the armies, watched an aeroplane swing high over the trees and soar off towards Versailles. He discharged his car at the Arc de Triomphe, and set about deciphering the carven pictures. Then, he walked up the great Avenue, made his way to the Place de la République, wandered through the gardens of the Louvre, and, as dusk fell, found himself in the Avenue de l’Opera. It was very gay. He had a bock at a little marble table, and courteously declined the invitations of a lady of considerable age painted to look young. He at first simply refused, and finally cursed into silence, a weedy, flash youth who offered to show him the sights of the city in an apparently ascending scale till he reached the final lure of a cancan, and he dined greatly at a palace of a restaurant. Then, tired, he did not know what to do.

A girl passing, smiled at him, and he smiled back. She came and sat down. He looked bored, she told him, which was a thing one should not be in Paris, and she offered to assist him to get rid of the plague.

“What do you suggest?” he demanded.

She shrugged her shoulders anything that he pleased.

“But I don’t know what I want,” he objected.

“Ah, well, I have a flat near,” she said “a charming flat. We need not be bored there.”

Peter demurred. He had to catch the midnight train. She made a little gesture; there was plenty of time.

He regarded her attentively. “See, mademoiselle,” he said, “I do not want that. But I am alone and I want company. Will you not stroll about Paris with me for an hour or two, and talk?”

She smiled. Monsieur was unreasonable. She had her time to consider; she could not waste it.

Peter took his case from his pocket and selected a note, folded it, and handed it to her, without a word. She slipped it into her bag. “Give me a cigarette,” she said. “Let us have one little glass here, and then we will go on to an ’otel I know, and hear the band and see the dresses, and talk is it not so?”

He could not have found a better companion. In the great lounge, later on, leaning back by his side, she chatted shrewdly and with merriment. She described dresses and laughed at his ignorance. She acclaimed certain pieces, and showed a real knowledge of music. She told him of life in Paris when the Hun had all but knocked at the gates, of the gaiety of relief, of things big and little, of the flowers in the Bois in the spring. He said little, but enjoyed himself. Much later she went with him to the station, and they stood outside to say good-bye.

“Well, little girl,” he said, “you have given me a good evening, and I am very grateful. But I do not even know your name. Tell it me, that I may remember.”

“Mariette,” she said. “And will monsieur not take my card? He may be in Paris again. He is très agréable; I should like much to content him. One meets many, but there are few one would care to see again.”

Peter smiled sadly. For the first time a wistful note had crept into her voice. He thought of others like her that he knew, and he spoke very tenderly. “No, Mariette,” he said. “If I came back I might spoil a memory. Good-bye. God bless you!” and he held out his hand. She hesitated a second. Then she turned back to the taxi.

“Where would you like to go?” he demanded.

She leaned out and glanced up at the clock. “L’Avenue de l’Opera,” she said, “s’il vous plait.”

The man thrust in the clutch with his foot, and Mariette was lost to Peter for ever in the multitude.

In Boulogne he heard that he was late for the first boat, but caught the second easily. Remembering Donovan’s advice, he got his ticket for the Pullman at once, and was soon rolling luxuriously to town. The station was bustling as it had done what seemed to him an age before, but he stepped out with the feeling that he was no longer a fresher in the world’s or any other university. Declining assistance, he walked over to the Grosvenor and engaged a room, dined, and then strolled out into Victoria Street.

It was all so familiar and it was all so different. He stood aloof and looked at himself, and played with the thought. It was incredible that he was the Peter Graham of less than a year before, and that he walked where he had walked a score of times. He went up Whitehall, and across the Square, and hesitated whether or not he should take the Strand. Deciding against it, he made his way to Piccadilly Circus and chose a music-hall that advertised a world-famous comedian. He heard him and came out, still laughing to himself, and then he walked down Piccadilly to Hyde Park Corner, and stood for a minute looking up Park Lane. Hilda ought to come down, he said to himself amusedly. Then, marvelling that he could be amused at all at the thought, he turned off for his hotel.

It is nothing to write down, but to Peter it was very much. Everything was old, but everything was new to him. At his hotel he smoked a cigarette in the lounge just to watch the men and women who came and went, and then he declined the lift and ascended the big staircase to his room. As he went, it struck him why it was that he felt so much wiser than he had been; that he looked on London from the inside, whereas he had used to look from the outside only; that he looked with a charity of which he had never dreamed, and that he was amazingly content. And as he got into bed he thought that when next he slept in town he would not be alone. He would have crossed Tommy’s Rubicon.

Next morning he went down into the country to relations who did not interest him at all; but he walked and rode and enjoyed the English countryside with zest. He went to the little country church on the Sunday twice, to Matins and Evensong, and he came home and read that chapter of Mr. Wells’ book in which Mr. Britling expounds the domestication of God. And he had some fierce moments in which he thought of Louise, and of Lucienne’s sister, and of Mariette, and of Pennell, and, last of all, of Jenks, and asked himself of what use a domesticated God could be to any of them. And then on the Thursday he came up to meet Julie.

It thrilled him that she was in England somewhere and preparing to come to him. His pulses beat so as he thought of it that every other consideration was temporarily driven from his mind; but presently he caught himself thinking what ought to be done, and of what she would be like. He turned it over in his mind. He had known her in France, in uniform, when he was not sure of her; but now, what would she be like? He could not conceive, and he banished the idea. It would be more splendid when it occurred if he had made no imaginary construction of it.

His station was King’s Cross, and he took a taxi to a big central hotel in the neighbourhood of Regent Street. And as he passed its doors they closed irrevocably on his past.

The girl at the bureau looked up and smiled. “Good-morning,” she said. “What can I do for you? We are very full.”

“Good-morning,” he replied. “I expect you are, but my wife is coming up to town this afternoon, and we have only a few days together. We want to be as central as possible. Have you a small suite over the week-end?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and pulled the big book toward her. She ran a finger down the page. “Four-twenty,” she said “double bedroom, sitting-room, and bathroom, how would that do?”

“It sounds capital,” said Peter. “May I go and see it?”

She turned in her seat, reached for a key, and touched a button. A man appeared, soundlessly on the thick, rich carpet. “Show this officer four-twenty, will you?” she said, and turned to someone else. What means so much to some of us is everyday business to others.

Peter followed across the hall and into a lift. They went up high, got out in a corridor, took a turn to the right, and stopped before a door numbered 420. The man opened it. Peter was led into a little hall, with two doors leading from it. The first room was the sitting-room. It was charmingly furnished and very cosy, a couple of good prints on the walls, wide fireplace, a tall standard lamp, some delightfully easy chairs all this he took in at a glance. He walked to the window and looked out. Far below was the great thoroughfare, and beyond a wilderness of roofs and spires. He stood and gazed at it. London seemed a different, place up there. He felt remote, and looked again into the street. Its business rolled on indifferent to him, and unaware. He glanced back into the snug pretty little room. How easy it all was, how secure! “This is excellent,” he said, “Show me the bedroom.”

“This way, sir,” said, the man.

The bedroom was large and airy. A pretty light paper covered the walls, and two beds stood against one of them, side by side. The sun shone in at the big double windows and fell on the white paint of the woodwork, the plate-glass tops of the toilet-tables, and the thick cream-coloured carpet. A door was open on his right. He walked across, and looked in there too. A tiled bathroom, he saw it was, the clean towels on the highly polished brass rail heated by steam, the cork-mat against the wall, the shower, douche, and spray all complete, even the big cake of delicious-looking soap on its sliding rack across the bath. He looked as a man in a fairy-story might look. It was as if an enchanted palace, with the princess just round the corner, had been offered him. Smiling at the conceit, he turned to the man. “I didn’t notice the telephone,” he said; “I suppose it is installed?”

“In each room, sir,” said the man.

“That will do,” said Peter. “It will suit me admirably. Have my baggage sent up, will you, and say that I engage the suite. I will be down presently.”

“Yes, sir,” said the man, and departed.

Peter went back to the sitting-room, and threw himself into a chair. Then he had an idea, got up, went to the telephone, ordered a bottle of whisky to be sent up, and a siphon, and went back to his seat. Presently he was pouring himself out a drink and smoking a cigarette on his own (temporary) hearth-rug. The little incident increased his satisfaction. He was reassuring himself. Here he was really safe and remote and master, with a thousand servants and a huge palace at his beck and call, and all for a few pounds! It was absurd, but he thought to himself that he was feeling civilised for the first time, perhaps.

He looked round, and considered Julie. What would she want? Flowers to begin with, heaps of them; she liked violets for one thing, and by hook or by crook he would get a little wattle or mimosa to remind her of Africa. Then chocolates and cigarettes, both must never be lacking, and a few books no, not books, magazines; and he would have some wine sent up. What else? Biscuits; after the theatre they might be jolly. Ah, the theatre! he must book seats. Well, a box would be better; they did not want to run too great a risk of being seen. Donovan was quite possibly in town, to say nothing of older friends. Possibly, considering the run on the theatres, he had better book up fairly completely for the days they had together. But what would she like? Julie would never want to go if she did not spontaneously fancy a play. It was a portentous question, and he considered it long. Finally he decided on half-and-half measures, leaving some time free.... Time! how did it go? By Jove! he ought to make a move. Luncheon first; his last meal alone for some time; then order the things; and Victoria at 5.30. He poured himself another short drink and went out.

He lunched in a big public grill-room, and chatted with a naval officer at his table who was engaged in mine-sweeping with a steam-tramp. The latter was not vastly enthusiastic over things, but was chiefly depressed because he had to report at a naval base that night, and his short London leave was all but run out.

“Tell you what,” he said, “I’ve seen a good many cities one way and another, from San Francisco to Singapore, and I know Paris and Brussels and Berlin, but you can take my word for it, there’s no better place for ten days’ leave than this same old blessed London. You can have some spree out East if you want it, but you can get much the same, if not better, here. If a fellow wants a bit of a skirt, he can get as good a pick in London as anywhere. If you want a good show, there isn’t another spot in the universe that can beat it, whatever it is you feel like. If you want to slip out of sight for a bit, give me a big hotel like this in London. They don’t damn-well worry about identification papers much here too little, p’raps, these days. Did you hear of those German submarine officers who lived in an hotel in Southampton?”

Peter had; there were few people who hadn’t, seeing that the same officers lived in most of the coast towns in England that year; but it is a pity to damp enthusiasm. He said he had heard a little.

“Walked in and out cool as you please. When they were drowned and picked up at sea, they had bills and theatre tickets in their pockets, and a letter acknowledging the booking of rooms for the next week! Fact. Had it from the fellow who got ’em. And I ask you, what is there to prevent it? You come here: ‘Will you write your name and regiment, please.’ You write the damned thing any old thing, in fact and what happens? Nothing. They don’t refer to them. In France the lists go to a central bureau every day, but here Lord bless you, the Kaiser himself might put up anywhere if he shaved his moustache!”

Peter heard him, well content. He offered a cigarette, feeling warmly disposed towards the world at large. The naval officer took it. “Thanks,” he said. “You in town for long?”

“No,” said Peter “a week end. I’ve only just happened. What’s worth seeing?”

“First and last all the way, Carminetta. It’s a dream. Wonderful. By Gad, I don’t know how that girl does it! Then I’d try Zigzag oh! and go to You Never Know, You Know, at the Cri. Absolutely toppin’. A perfect scream all through. The thing at Daly’s’ good too; but all the shows are good, though, I reckon. Lumme, you wouldn’t think the war was on, ’cept they all touch it a bit! The Better ’Olé I like, but you mightn’t, knowing the real thing. But don’t miss Carminetta if you have to stand all day for a seat in the gods. Well, I must be going. Damned rough luck, but no help for it. Let’s have a last spot, eh?”

Peter agreed, and the drinks were ordered. “Chin-chin,” said his acquaintance. “And here’s to old London town, and the Good Lord let me see it again. It’s less than even chances,” he added reflectively.

“Here’s luck,” said Peter; then, for he couldn’t help it: “It’s you chaps, by God, that are winning this war!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said the other, rising. “We get more leave than you fellows, and I’d sooner be on my tramp than in the trenches. The sea’s good and clean to die in, anyway. Cheerio.”

Peter followed him out in a few minutes, and set about his shopping. He found a florist’s in Regent Street and bought lavishly. The girl smiled at him, and suggested this and that. “Having a dinner somewhere to-night?” she queried. “But I have no violets.”

“Got my girl comin’ up,” said Peter expansively; “that’s why there must be violets. See if you can get me some and send them over, will you?” he asked, naming his hotel. She promised to do her best, and he departed.

He went into a chocolate shop. “Got some really decent chocolates?” he demanded.

The girl smiled and dived under the counter. “These are the best,” she said, holding out a shovelful for Peter to taste. He tried one. “They’ll do,” he said. “Give me a couple of pounds, in a pretty box if you’ve got one.”

“Two pounds!” she exclaimed. “What are you thinking of? We can only sell a quarter.”

“Only a quarter!” said Peter. “That’s no good. Come on, make up the two pounds.”

“If my boss comes in or finds out I’ll be fired,” said the girl; “can’t be done.”

“Well, that doesn’t matter,” said Peter innocently, “You’ll easily get a job something better and easier, I expect.”

“It’s easy enough, perhaps,” said the girl, “but you never can tell. And it’s dangerous, and uncertain.”

Peter stared at her. When he bought chocolates as a parson, he never had talks like this. He wondered if London had changed since he knew it. Then he played up: “You’re pretty enough to knock that last out, anyway?” he said.

“Am I?” she demanded. “Do you mean you’d like to keep me?”

“I’ve got one week-end left of leave,” said Peter. “What about the chocolates?”

“Poor boy!” she said. “Well, I’ll risk it.” And she made up the two pounds.

He wandered into a tobacconist’s, and bought cigarettes which Julie’s soul loved, and then he made for a theatre booking-office.

Outside and his business done, he looked at his watch, and found he had a bit of time to spare. He walked down Shaftesbury Avenue, and thought he would get himself spruced up at a hairdresser’s. He saw a little place with a foreigner at the door, and he went in. It was a tiny room with three seats all empty. The man seated him in one and began.

Peter discovered that his hair needed this and that, and being in a good temper and an idle mood acquiesced. Presently a girl came in. Peter smelt her enter, and then saw her in the glass. She was short and dark and foreign, too, and she wore a blouse that appeared to have remarkably little beneath it, and to be about to slip off her shoulders. She came forward and stood between him and the glass, smiling. “Wouldn’t you like your nails manicured?” she demanded.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Peter; “I had not meant to ...” and was lost.

“Second thoughts are best,” she said; “but let me look at your hands. Oh, I should think you did need it! Whatever will your girl say to you to-night if you have hands like this?”

Peter, humiliated, looked at his hands. They did not appear to him to differ much from the hands Julie and others had seen without visible consternation before, but he had no time to say so. The young lady was now seated by his side with a basin of hot water, and was dabbling his hand in it. “Nice? Not too hot?” she inquired brightly.

Peter watched her as she bent over her work and kept up a running fire of talk. He gathered that many officers habitually were manicured by her, many of them in their own rooms. It was lucky for him that she was not out. Possibly he would like to make an appointment; she could come early or late. No? Then she thought his own manicure-set must be a poor one, judging from these hands, and perhaps she could sell him another. No? Well, a little cream. Not to-day? He would look in to-morrow? He hadn’t a chance? She would tell him what: where was he staying? (Peter, for the fun of it, told her he had a private suite in the hotel.) Well, that was splendid. She would call in with a new set at any time, before breakfast, after the theatre, as he pleased; bring the cream and do his hands once with it to show him how. How would that suit him?

Peter was not required to say, for at that minute the shop-bell rang and a priest came in, a little old man, tired-looking, in a black cassock. He was apparently known, though he seemed to take no notice of anyone. The man was all civility, but put on an expression meant to indicate amusement, to Peter, behind the clerical back. The girl put one of Peter’s fingers on her own lips by way of directing caution, and continued more or less in silence. The room became all but silent save for the sound of scissors and the noise of the traffic outside, and Peter reflected again on many things. When he had had his hair cut previously, for instance, had people made faces behind his back? Had young ladies ceased from tempting offers that seemed to include more than manicuring?

He got up to pay. “Well,” she demanded, sotto voce, “what of the arrangement? She could do him easily at any...”

He cut her short. No; it was really impossible. His wife was coming up that afternoon. It was plain that she now regarded it as impossible also. He paid an enormous sum wonderingly, and departed.

Outside it struck him that he had forgotten one thing. He walked briskly to the hotel, and went up to his rooms. In the sitting-room was the big bunch of flowers and a maid unwrapping it. She turned and smiled at him. “These have just come for you, sir,” she said. “Shall I arrange them for you?”

“No, thank you,” said Peter. “I’d rather do them myself. I love arranging flowers, and I know just what my wife likes. I expect you’d do them better, but I’ll have a shot, if you don’t mind. Would you fill the glasses and get me a few more? We haven’t enough here.”

“Certainly, sir. There was a gentleman here once who did flowers beautifully, he did. But most likes us to do it for them.”

She departed for the glasses. Peter saw that the florist had secured his violets, and took them first and filled a bowl. Then he walked into the bedroom and contemplated for a minute. Then he put the violets critically on the little table by the bed nearest the window, and stood back to see the result. Finding it good, he departed. When next he came in, it was to place a great bunch of roses on the mantelshelf, and a few sprays of the soft yellow and green mimosa on the dressing-table. For the sitting-room he had carnations and delphiniums, and he placed a high towering cluster of the latter on the writing-table, and a vase of the former on the mantelpiece. A few roses, left over, went on the small table that carried the reading-lamp, and he and the chambermaid surveyed the results.

“Lovely, I do think,” she said; “any lady would love them. I likes flowers myself, I do. I come from the country, sir, where there’s a many, and the wild flowers that Jack and I liked best of all. Specially primroses, sir.” There was a sound in her voice as she turned away, and Peter heard it.

“Jack?” he queried softly.

“’E’s been missing since last July, sir,” she said, stopping by the door.

“Has he?” said Peter. “Well, you must not give up hope, you know; he may be a prisoner.”

She shook her head. “He’s dead,” she said, with an air of finality. “I oughtn’t to have spoke a word, but them flowers reminded me. I’m glad as how I have to do these rooms, sir. Most of them don’t bother with flowers. Is there anything else you might be wanting, sir?”

“Light fires in both the grates, please,” he said. “I’m so sorry about Jack,” he added.

She gave him a look, and passed out.

Peter wandered about touching this and that. Suddenly he remembered the magazines. He ran out and caught a lift about to descend, and was once more in the street. Near Leicester Square was a big foreign shop, and he entered it, and gathered of all kinds. As he went to pay, he saw La Vie Parisienne, and added that also to the bundle; Julie used to say she loved it. Back in the hotel, he sent them to his room, and glanced at his watch. He had time for tea. He went out into the lounge and ordered it, sitting back under the palms. It came, and he was in the act of pouring out a cup when he saw Donovan.

Donovan was with a girl, but so were most men; Peter could not be sure of her. It was only a glimpse he had, for the two had finished and were passing out. Donovan stood back to let her first through the great swing-doors, and then, pulling on his gloves, followed. They both disappeared.

Peter sat on, in a tumult. He had been too busy all day to reflect much, but now just what he was about to do began to overwhelm him. If Donovan met him with Julie? Well, they could pretend they had just met, they could even part, and meet again. Could they? Would Donovan be deceived for a minute? It seemed to him impossible. And he might be staying there. Suppose he met someone else. Langton? Sir Robert Doyle? His late Vicar? Hilda? Mr. Lessing? And Julie would have acquaintances too. He shook himself mentally, and lit a cigarette. Well, suppose they did; he was finished with them. Finished? Then, what lay ahead what, after this, if he were discovered? And if he were not discovered? God knew....

His mind took a new train of thought: he was now just such a one as Donovan. Or as Pennell. As Langton? He wasn’t sure; no, he thought not; Langton kept straight because he had a wife and kids. He had a centre. Donovan and Pennell had not, apparently. Well, he, Peter Graham, would have a centre; he would marry Julie. It would be heavenly. They had not spoken of it, of course, that night of the dinner, but surely Julie would. There could be no doubt after the week-end.... “I shan’t marry or be given in marriage,” she had said. It was like her to speak so, but of course she didn’t mean it. No, he would marry; and then?

He blew out smoke. The Colonies, South Africa; he would get a job schoolmastering? He hated the idea; it didn’t interest him. A farm? He knew nothing about it besides, one wanted capital. What would he do? What did he want to do? Want that was it; how did he want to spend his life? Well, he wanted Julie; everything else would fit round her, everything else would be secondary beside her. Of course. And as he got old it would still be the same, though he could not imagine either of them old. But still, when they did get old, his work would seem more important, and what was it to be? Probably it would have to be schoolmastering. Teaching Latin to little boys History, Geography, Mathematics. He smiled ruefully; even factors worried him. They would hardly want Latin and Greek much in the Colonies, either. Perhaps at home; but would Julie stop at home? What would Julie do? He must ask her, sometime before Monday. Not that night no, not that night....

He ground his cigarette into his cup, and pushed his hands into his pockets, his feet out before him. That night! He saw the sitting-room upstairs; they would go there first. Then he would suggest a dinner to her, in Soho; he knew a place that Pennell had told him of, Bohemian, but one could take anyone at least, take Julie. It would be jolly watching the people, and watching Julie. He saw her, mentally, opposite him, and her eyes sparkling and alluring. And afterwards, warmed and fed why, back to the hotel, to the sitting-room, by the fire. They would have a little supper, and then....

He pictured the bedroom. He would let Julie go first. He remembered reading in a novel how some newly married wife said to the fellow: “You’ll come up in half an hour or so, won’t you, dear?” He could all but see the words in print. And so, in half an hour or so, he would go in, and Julie would be in bed, by the violets, and he he would know what men talked about, sometimes, in the anteroom.... He recalled a red-faced, coarse Colonel: “No man’s a man till he’s been all the way, I say....”

And he was a chaplain, a priest. Was he? The past months spun before him, his sermons, his talks to the wounded at the hospital, the things he had seen, the stories he had heard. He sighed. It was all a dream, a sham. There was no reality in it all. Where and what was Christ? An ideal, yes, but no more than an ideal, and unrealisable a vision of the beautiful. He thought he had seen that once, but not now. The beautiful! Ah! What place had His Beauty in Travalini’s, in the shattered railway-carriage, in the dinner at the Grand in Havre with Julie?

Julie. He dwelt on her, eyes, hair, face, skin, and lithe figure. He felt her kisses again on his lips, those last burning kisses of New Year’s Night, and they were all to be his, as never before.... Julie. What, then, was she? She was his bride, his wife, coming to him consecrate not by any State convention, not by any ceremony of man-made religion, but by the pure passion of human love, virginal, clean. It was human passion, perhaps, but where was higher love or greater sacrifice? Was this not worthy of all his careful preparation, worthy of the one centre of his being? Donovan, indeed! He wished he had stopped and told him the whole story, and that he expected Julie that night.

He jumped up, and walked out in the steps of Donovan, but with never another thought of him. A boy in uniform questioned him: “Taxi, sir?” He nodded, and the commissionaire pushed back the great swing-door. He stood on the steps, and watched the passers-by, and the lights all shaded as they were, that began to usher in a night of mystery. His taxi rolled up, and the man held the door open. “Victoria!” cried Peter, and to himself, as he sank back on the seat, “Julie!”