“Omar Khayyam!” exclaimed Peter.  “Good idea!  He’s a blasphemous old pagan, but the verse is glorious and it fits in at times.  Do you want me to start at once?”

“Give me a cigarette! no, put the box there.  Stir up the fire.  Come and sit on the floor with your back to me.  That’s right.  Now fire away.”

She leaned back and he began.  He read for the rhythm; she listened for the meaning.  He read to the end; she hardly heard more than a stanza: 

“Oh, threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise! 
One thing at least is certain—­this Life flies;
One thing is certain, and the rest is lies—­
The flower that once has blown for ever dies.”

They lunched in the hotel, and at the table Peter put the first necessary questions that they both dreaded.  “I’m going to tell them to make out my bill, Julie,” he said.  “I’ve to be at Victoria at seven-thirty a.m. to-morrow, you know.  You’ve still got some leave, haven’t you, dear; what are you going to do?  How long will you stay on here?”

“Not after you’ve gone, Peter,” she said.  “Let them make it out for me till after breakfast to-morrow.”

“But what are we going to do?” he demanded.

“Oh, don’t ask.  It spoils to-day to think of to-morrow.  Go to my friends, perhaps—­yes, I think that.  It’s only for a few days now.”

“Oh, Julie, I wish I could stay.”

“So do I, but you can’t, so don’t worry.  What about this afternoon?”

“If it’s stopped raining, let’s go for a walk, shall we?”

They settled on that, and it was Julie who took him again to St. James’s Park.  As they walked:  “Where did you go to church this morning, Peter?” she asked.

He pointed to the campanile.  “Over there,” he said.

“Then let’s go together to-night,” she said.

“Do you mean it, Julie?”

“Of course I do.  I’m curious.  Besides, it’s Sunday, and I want to go to church.”

“But you’ll miss dinner,” objected Peter.  “It begins at six-thirty.”

“Well, let’s get some food out—­Victoria Station, for instance.  Won’t that do?  We can have some supper sent up afterwards in the hotel.”

Peter agreed, but they did not go to the station.  In a little cafe outside Julie saw a South African private eating eggs and bacon, and nothing would do but that they must do the same.  So they went in.  They ate off thick plates, and Julie dropped the china pepper-pot on her eggs and generally behaved as if she were at a school-treat.  But it was a novelty, and it kept their thoughts off the fact that it was the last night.  And finally they went to church.

The service did not impress Peter, and every time he looked at Julie’s face he wanted to laugh; but the atmosphere of the place did, though he could not catch the impression of the morning.  For the sermon, a stoutish, foreign-looking ecclesiastic mounted the pulpit, and they both prepared to be bored.  However, he gave out his text, and Peter sat bolt upright at once.  It would have delighted the ears of his Wesleyan corporal of the Forestry; and more than that it was the text he had quoted in the ears of the dying Jenks.  He prepared keenly to listen.  As for Julie, she was regarding the altar with a far-away look in her eyes, and she scarcely moved the whole time.