that he did not want you when he came to die.  If a man lives without God, he can hardly expect to find Him at the point of sudden death.  What you say about Christ, too, utterly bewilders me.  Surely our Church’s teachings in the Catechism and the Prayer-Book is Christian teaching, isn’t it?  Nothing is perfect on earth, and the Church is human, but our Church is certainly the best I know of.  It is liberal, active, moderate, and—­I don’t like the word, but after all it is a good one—­respectable.  I don’t know much about these things, but surely you of all people don’t want to go shouting in the street like a Salvation Army Captain.  I can’t see that that is more ‘in touch with reality.’  Peter, what do you mean?  Are not St. John’s, and the Canon, and my people, and myself, real?  Surely, Peter, our love is real, isn’t it?  Oh, how can you doubt that?

“Darling boy, don’t you think you are over-strained and over-worried?  You are in a strange country, among strange people, at a very peculiar time.  War always upsets everything and makes things abnormal.  London, even, isn’t normal, but, as the Canon said the other day, a great many of the things people do just now are due to reaction against strain and anxiety.  Can’t you see this?  Isn’t there any clergyman you can go and talk to?  Your Presbyterian and other new friends and your visits to Roman Catholic churches can’t be any real help.

“Peter, dear, for my sake, do, do try to see things like this.  I hate that bit in your letter about publicans and sinners.  How can a clergyman expect them to help him?  Surely you ought to avoid such people, not seek their company.  It is so like you to get hold of a text or two and run it to death.  It’s not that I don’t trust you, but you are so easily influenced, and you may equally easily go and do something that will separate us and ruin your life.  Peter, I hate to write like this, but I can’t help it....”

Peter let the sheets fall from his hands and stared out of the little window.  The gulls were screaming and fighting over some refuse in the harbour, and he watched the beat of their wings, fascinated.  If only he, too, could catch the wind and be up and away like that!

He jumped up and paced up and down the floor restlessly, and he told himself that Hilda was right and he was a cad and worse.  Julie’s kiss on his lips burned there yet.  That at any rate was wrong; by any standards he had no right to behave so.  How could he kiss her when he was pledged to Hilda—­Hilda to whom everyone had looked up, the capable, lady-like, irreproachable Hilda, the Hilda to whom Park Lane and St. John’s were such admirable setting.  And who was he, after all, to set aside all that for which both those things stood?

And yet....  He sat down by the little table and groaned.

“What the dickens is the matter with you, padre?”

Peter started and looked round.  In the doorway stood Pennell, regarding him with amusement.  “Here am I trying to read, and you pacing up and down like a wild beast.  What the devil’s up?”