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.