Afterwards he knew that he had stood that night in deadly danger.  A wild craving to escape from himself and his solitude by some unusual means, beat against the walls of his heart.  So far in life, from early boyhood to manhood, a vigorous love for things beautiful, an intense self-respect, an Epicureanism half instinctive, half inculcated by his country life and innate spirituality, had kept him from even the thought of things evil.  Yet to-night the mainspring of his life was out of gear.  It was distraction, instant and immediate, he craved for—­of any kind, almost at any cost.  He walked blindly, and a curious sense of irresponsibility possessed him.  The lights of a little restaurant flared in his face—­he entered, and called for wine.  He sat at a small table with champagne before him, and the men and women who crowded the place looked at him curiously.  Doggedly he filled his glass and drank.  Some one came and spoke to him—­from whom at another time he would have turned away, kindly enough, but as from a leper.  He shared his wine, talked purposelessly, and listened.  A luminous moment came, however; he paid his bill, and walked firmly from the place.  In the Strand the church bells were ringing, for it was Sunday.  He turned westwards and walked rapidly towards Westminster.

Even in the porch he hesitated.  Since he had left he had never entered a church nor chapel.  The sound of the organ came pealing out to him—­others were passing in, in a little stream; soon he, too, found himself in one of the back seats.

* * * * *

Two hours later he walked out into the cool night air a new man, with head erect, his brain clear, swept clean of many sickly phantoms.  His virility was renewed, he looked out once more upon life with eyes militant and brave heart.  He was full of the sense of having passed through some purging and beneficent experience.  It was not that his religious belief or disbeliefs had been affected, or even quickened by anything he had heard—­yet, from first to last, those two hours had been full of delight to him.  The vast, dimly-lit building, with its imposing array of statuary, shadowy figures of great statesmen, soldiers, and priests seen by him then, as it chanced, for the first time, woke him at once from his lethargy.  Religion seemed brought in a single moment into touch with the great things of life.  There were men there who had been creedless, but great; genius was honoured side by side with sanctity.  The rolling music, the pure, fresh voices of the boys appealed to his sense of the beautiful, as those historical associations reawakened his ambition.  The white-robed priest, who stood in the centre of the great building, yet whose voice without effort seemed able to penetrate to its furthest corner, seemed both in his personal self and in his scholarly diction exquisitely in accord with his great surroundings.  Without a manuscript, with scarcely a note, he stood there, calm and imposing,