“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