incense on stone could not eclipse that authentic perfume of respectability which has been acquired by so many Roman Catholic churches in England.  There were still hanging on the pillars the framed numbers of Sunday’s hymns.  Mark pictured the choir boy who must have slipped the cards in the frame with anxious and triumphant and immemorial Anglican zeal; and while he was contemplating this symbolical hymn-board, over his shoulder floated an authentic Anglican voice, a voice that sounded as if it was being choked out of the larynx by the clerical collar.  It was the Rector, a stumpy little man with the purple stock of a monseigneur, who showed the stranger round his church and ended by inviting him to lunch.  Mark, wondering if he had reached a crossroad in his progress, accepted the invitation, and prepared himself reverently to hear the will of God.  Monseigneur Cripps lived in a little Gothic house next to St. Joseph’s, a trim little Gothic house covered with the oiled curls of an ampelopsis still undyed by autumn’s henna.

“You’ve chosen a bad day to come to lunch,” said Monseigneur with a warning shake of the head.  “It’s Friday, you know.  And it’s hard to get decent fish away from the big towns.”

While his host went off to consult the housekeeper about the extra place for lunch, a proceeding which induced him to make a joke about extra ‘plaice’ and extra ‘place,’ at which he laughed heartily, Mark considered the most tactful way of leading up to a discussion of the position of the Anglican Church in regard to Roman claims.  It should not be difficult, he supposed, because Monseigneur at the first hint of his guest’s desire to be converted would no doubt welcome the topic.  But when Monseigneur led the way to his little Gothic dining-room full of Arundel prints, Mark soon apprehended that his host had evidently not had the slightest notion of offering an ad hoc hospitality.  He paid no attention to Mark’s tentative advances, and if he was willing to talk about Rome, it was only because he had just paid a visit there in connexion with a school of which he was a trustee and out of which he wanted to make one kind of school and the Roman Catholic Bishop of Dudley wanted to make another.

“I had to take the whole question to headquarters,” Monseigneur explained impressively.  “But I was disappointed by Rome, oh yes, I was very disappointed.  When I was a young man I saw it couleur de rose.  I did enjoy one thing though, and that was going round the Vatican.  Yes, they looked remarkably smart, the Papal Guards; as soon as they saw I was Monsignore, they turned out and presented arms.  I’m bound to admit that I was impressed by that.  But on the way down I lost my pipe in the train.  And do you think I could buy a decent pipe in Rome?  I actually had to pay five lire—­or was it six?—­for this inadequate tube.”

He produced from his pocket the pipe he had been compelled to buy, a curved briar all varnish and gold lettering.