Chapter II

I

THE air was of that peculiar freshness of an Italian spring morning as, three days later, Nevill drove out alone in a little victoria, with his man on the box, for the sensation of a Mass in a Catacomb.

There are just a few things that are inevitable in Rome. He had already done three of them; he had visited St. Peter's; he had trailed after a guide through the Forum; he had visited Frascati. When, therefore, the Marquis Daly assured him that no one could leave Rome without hearing Mass in a Catacomb; that such a Mass had been arranged for by the priest whom he had met at lunch; that the Bessingtons were going because Enid had never had the experience, and that the entire party would be most pleased if he cared to join them there at half-past seven — at the entrance to the Catacomb of Saint Calixtus — there was only one possible answer.

The return from Frascati, three days ago, had been uneventful enough. He and Enid had spied a remnant of the party five minutes after leaving the wayside shrine, and had learned that they had scarcely been missed. Mrs. Bessington, it appeared, had prevailed on a majority to visit the Cathedral; a minority had got as far as the villa whose entrance the two had passed on their way up into the woods; Mr. Hecker alone had penetrated to Cicero's school, and returned again, damp but triumphant. For the journey back to Rome Nevill had found himself with the Princess and Mr. Clough; and Enid was seen no more.

Nevill was quite aware that something was happening to him. He would, at this period, have thought it ridiculous to say that he was in the least in love with Enid. It was not that at all, he assured himself: it was rather that he began to see that women were not what he had thought them.

He had thought them, hitherto (as most wholesome and well-bred young men think them), to be not much otherwise than rather imperfect men; he thought them just a little odd and rather silly, or, if not silly, at least very gravely handicapped by a peculiar constitution of mind. They were emotional in the wrong way, he thought; they could not reason coolly; there was a trace of dishonourableness— or, to put it more mildly, their code of honour was not the same as that of men. Above all, they lacked the quality of comradeship. One could like them rather and be friendly with them, and very courteous: one could even marry them — (he supposed this would have to be done, some day) — but a woman could not be a comrade to a man. She could be almost anything else... but not that.

He was thinking gently about all this, as he drove out along the stony walled way that leads from Rome to Saint Calixtus Cemetery. Overhead the pale sky brightened like a slow smile, and the larks were singing somewhere up in its luminosity. Curious and Italian spectacles presented themselves; now a wine-cart coming in from the Campagna, splendidly barbaric with faded paint, hooded on high; now a team of mules straining to drag a load of cut stone blocks; now a group of brown-faced, brown-legged children stared at him from a doorway.

The early air was cold and strong like wine, full of vitality; it produced in him a strange sense of slight intoxication, for he had had nothing but a cup of coffee. He was to breakfast with the rest in the Trappist lodge for tourists.

He was comparing then his former ideas with his new ones. He began to see that Comradeship was quite possible with a woman: indeed, he was beginning to wonder whether it were not possible in a manner impossible with a man.

For he had never before met with such complete understanding. She had even told him what he was going to say — that day at lunch — before he had fully formulated it to himself. She had understood him, and not only understood him, but inspired him to understand as well as to express himself, again and again during the hour's talk in the Frascati woods. He had found himself more subtle than he had thought; she had drawn out his convictions as sunlight draws out the power of the seed. He had held his opinions before, of course, but he had never put them quite so well, even to himself, he thought. Was not that Comradeship?

Then, if this were so, he had been wrong about women. They were not inferior, but just different. And in that difference there lay their power.

Then he reflected, with apparent inconsequence, that it would be pleasant to be at Mass with Enid.

The group which he found waiting for him just within the gate of the enclosure consisted chiefly of people whom he knew. (Yes, the Bessingtons were there all right, rather in the background.) The Dalys obviously had charge of the party from the official point of view, and Mrs. Hecker from the intellectual.

" And this is all too lovely," she said; " so truly Catholic; and, Sir Nevill, you make it just complete. You stand for... for England, you know, and the feudal system. And you've brought your retainer with you, I see? "

Nevill said that it was certainly his man-servant, if that would do.

" Yes," pursued Mrs. Hecker, in a kind of ecstasy of intelligence; "and here's the Trappist monk — " (she indicated a meek bearded man in a brown frock who waited patiently a few yards away) — " to take us back to Silence. We're all here — a microcosm, you might say. But what I want to know is, What does all this say to me?" — (she waved an admirably gloved hand round the tangled garden wilderness) — " What is its message to me, right now? What am I to take away with me that I hadn't before? "

(It was all too bright and nickel-plated, thought Nevill. She put so explicitly and adequately the thoughts which other people were content to reflect about.)

" I think the Brother's waiting," said the Marquis a little anxiously. " Father Martinelli will have vested by now."

He led the way, faintly reminiscent in his movements of a dancing-master, towards the little arched building that protected the entrance to the Catacomb.

Nevill tried to get near the Bessingtons as the group began to string itself out for the descent, but it was hopeless. He could hear Mrs. Bessington's voice trickling gently on, somewhere in front — he wondered whether it was about clergymen or Corfu, and to whom she believed

INITIATION S3 herself to be talking; but that was all. Mr. Hecker's grey coat and neat trousered legs and trim hair was the only object immediately before him, descending tranquilly and steadily down the long flight of steps into the mysterious darkness beneath, lit by the ruddy light of three or four tapers.

He had never been in a Catacomb before, and he presently found himself quite interested. Floor, roof and walls of the tunnel seemed all alike, of a curious powdery texture; here and there he could make out slabs of stone, engraved with letters; there was also a powdery sort of taste in the air, as of the last and ultimate essence of dryness. He did not know much about Catacombs, but he was aware, from fragments of Mrs. Bessington's conversation on a previous day, that they were, all told, strung out end to end, about eight hundred miles long; and that they had been, in the days of persecution, at once the hiding-holes of Christians, their places of worship, and their cemeteries. Certainly that was interesting, even if a little stuffy; he did not quite know why he had got up so early to come to them, though; and the next instant, with a flash of clear-sightedness, he knew very well why he had come.

When he found himself settled at last in his place, kneeling, since the others knelt too, on the powdery floor, the romance and mysteriousness of it all came on him suddenly.

It was an excavated chapel in which they all knelt, perhaps fifteen feet high, but with a long funnel coming down from the upper air far above, shedding an oddly unreal kind of bluish light which met but did not mix with the yellow light of the tapers. The walls were dim and dark, but here and there upon them showed incised slabs, marking, he thought, the last resting-places of men and women who had lived and died at least sixteen hundred years ago. There was one cleared space not far from him — as if the foot of the wall had been excavated — whence came a soft light as of burning lamps: he supposed this must be the place where Saint Cecilia's body had been found lying as if she slept. (So much he knew from a hurried glance at Baedeker last night, in bed.)

The little chapel was nearly full of worshippers, but the light was so odd that he could not identify at first more than three or four of them. Neither could he see where Enid knelt. A few faces were brightly and softly illuminated; the rest were hooded shadows. Above all, however, rose the crimson figure of the priest in the midst: Nevill could catch his profile now and again — a fine Italian profile, of a complexion at once dark and clear — and the glimmer of a silver hair or two about his ear and temple. The only sound down here was the steady murmur of his voice. There was a faint aromatic smell as of crushed box or bay.

The effect of all this was, of course, inevitable. The romance was unmistakable. For here, reproduced before his senses, was a scene that might have been presented sixteen hundred years ago. Here was the same liturgy — most of it verbally the same — repeated by a priest whose descent, both spiritual and physical, was direct. Here were the worshippers; here was the very place; the vestments, the tapers, the altar, the Mystic Bread, the Wine of God; and the Faith that looked on them. The very dresses of the women, in this half-light, the bandaged heads, the loose cloaks — these might have been the common disguise of Christian slaves and freedwomen of nearly two thousand years ago.

Yet the suggestion of all this met, in him, with a real resistance. It was true that he was a Catholic; that he never could be anything else; that there ran in his veins the blood of his Catholic forefathers; that he had a " chapel at home and a priest and all that "; that he went to the Sacraments at least once a year. Yet he was in that mental state, so characteristic of his age, in which his interior interest was not that of Catholicism. He was not consciously insincere; he was not, probably, insincere even unconsciously. If he had been confronted with a crisis, he would have adhered to Catholicism and accepted its dogmas with his will, even if not eminently with his intellect. But to his imagination it meant little or nothing; and it was in his imagination that he lived just now; and with his imagination that he felt that the ultimate secret of things was beneath all dogma; that was a Solution of everything to which Nature corresponded rather than Grace or Revelation. Joy, he felt, was the fundamental emotion of life; not the Passion or the Cross; and Catholicism meant to him the Cross.

He was perfectly correct, of course, in his bearing. He remained passive, on his knees; he even took out a string of beads from his pocket; but he left them idle in his hands. He bowed his head as the bell tinkled; he lifted up his face to see the glimmering Host as it rose between the priest's fingers; he even murmured soundlessly, "My Lord and. my God" — (there was an indulgence attached to that, he thought). But his central soul was in another region; in that region for which the mountains above Frascati stood, in the purely material plane; for which Enid was beginning to stand in the realm of humanity — the region of youthfulness and health and running water and clean joy and star-flowers and golden sunlight. It was not in the dull, yellow light of tapers, in crimson vestments, in underground chapels, however romantic, that, for him, Revelation embodied itself.

Then, as the priest drank the last ablution and the knee-weary worshippers shifted a little into easier attitudes, he suddenly saw Enid's face against the darkness, as clear as a flower, and her great dark eyes.

Ill

" Well! " said Mrs. Hecker, with enormous emphasis. " I think that's all just too wonderful. It's an experience! Isn't that so, Henry? "

They were out again in the sunshine, and the tangled garden was incredibly fair. On all sides, amongst the monuments and arched tabernacles and mighty stones, blazed the spring flowers, as glorious as a resurrection. The sun stood higher, and the morning air glowed warm beneath him, in vivid contrast to the strange sepulchral atmosphere of the Catacomb, at once dry and chilly.

" And there's old Rome," she said. " Just as always."

Mrs. Hecker always saw the dramatic element a shade quicker than anyone else. It had begun to annoy Nevill a little that this was so. Certainly Rome being " there, just as always " was exactly the next point. He had come out of the Catacomb, from the ghosts of the ages and the homes of the dead, in the midst of which the Living Sacrifice had been presented; and there, sure enough, was Rome again, blue and distant, with the bubble of St. Peter's dome to protect it — the ancient City that was eternally young. So those long dead slaves and women must have come out, perhaps with guards about them, from the house of refreshment and hope, to see the City of their passion awaiting them in stolid glory. One might almost forget Rome and the City of Life, down there in the noiseless gloom; but it would not be forgotten for long. It was there again, " just as always."

" Well, I guess breakfast is the next engagement," went on Mrs. Hecker. " It's very carnal and earthly and all that, of course; and I guess I'm no more carnal than other folks. But I want my breakfast."

Here again this was precisely the next emotion; and the most exalte there could not deny it. There was no more to be said; they must go to breakfast.

The Marquis Daly, who was responsible for the arrangements, had been very particular about breakfast. Fully two-thirds of the worshippers of his party were non-Catholics, and it was necessary to propitiate these by physical as well as spiritual comforts. Yet he dreaded the Trappists' omelets. Eighteen boiled eggs, then, awaited the company, laid in two slop-basins, with nine egg-cups — one for each — set amid saucers of a curious pink-looking preserve, piles of bread and nine tea-cups: all ranged on a long table set within the very bare and rather cold restaurant provided at the edge of the cemetery that was nearest Rome. Two large chromo-lithographs of Leo XIII. and Pius X. respectively, blessed the party from the walls.

Nevill had not a chance at Enid, even now. Mrs. Bessington secured him at her side, and began to describe to him the ways of the hall-porter of the flats where she and her daughter had their head-quarters in London.

Nevill decided, in the intervals of his assenting to her, that her secret lay in the fact that she said out loud what other people thought. Everyone has foolishly inconsequent trains of thought, selections from which are manifested in speech; but Mrs. Bessington manifested the whole. She gave him, presently, an admirable illustration of his theory.

" He always goes off duty at ten o'clock/' she was saying, " when the night-porter comes on, and even wears the same cap; because one evening Parkinson — that's the name of the day-porter — got impatient, I suppose, when Martin wasn't in time; and as I came in from an early dinner somewhere or other, I saw Parkinson's cap lying there on the table; because I know it was his, as, when I went in to see if any letters had come, I peeped inside the cap, and there was his name in red ink on the white lining; and as I was there Martin came in, late — as I said, and was in a great hurry; so he hung up his coat, just as I was going out, and as I went past the little window I saw him putting on the cap, so I knew it was the one: and it always seemed to me very odd that the people of the flat — in Cadogan Lane, because that's where it is — whoever they are, did not provide a cap for each one of the porters, instead of making them all wear the same one; as I suppose these poor monks do with their habits, which must be very unhealthy, I should think; as well as all their living underground so much, and running up and down all those steps, and never speaking, except the ones, I suppose, that look after visitors, because the one this morning talked a good deal, and told us to mind our heads, I remember, as we went under that low place in the tunnel; because I think "

She proceeded to give her views on the Trappist vocation....

Nevill was getting really an adept at doing three or four things at once. He attended quite adequately to Mrs. Bessington, and gave an answer now and again to the most startling opinions which she expressed as to Trappists, and, indeed, monks in general; and at the same time, greatly daring, set himself to discover what other people were talking about. Mrs. Hecker was, of course, stating in wonderfully adequate terms the " message " that the Catacombs had for her — and not the superficial message either; but quite a thoughtful one. (Nevill could not catch the whole of it, but its main purport was that the simple things were the greatest and most worth coming to terms with.) The Marchioness Daly was describing a reputed conversation of hers with the Secretary of State, in which that prelate, it appeared, took her advice in every particular and begged that he might have the advantage of it always in future. The Marquis Daly was discussing, in tolerable Italian, with the priest who had just said Mass, some recent researches in some newly-discovered Catacombs. Two more ladies, names unknown, were planning out the rest of their week. And Enid was silent.

He saw his chance after breakfast, and took it with marked promptitude.

She had slipped out alone; he saw that, for he was becoming very conscious of her indeed; and as Mrs. Bessington, still discoursing, turned to answer a question from one of the unknown ladies, he produced his cigarette-case, as a kind of guarantee of good faith to any who might be observing his movement, and slipped out also. She was already half way up the tiny path; but he was with her before she had reached the end.

They sat down presently, with their backs to a broken wall, a little way off from the path. Nevill was aware, with considerable satisfaction, that there would be quite a good time before they need go, as the party, generally speaking, was due to undertake a small exploration in the Catacomb under the guidance of the Trappist lay-brother. But he thought he would make sure of his good fortune.

" You don't want to go down again? " he said.

She shook her head.

" No; I think I've seen enough to... to get its message/' she said, smiling. " Besides, Mrs. Hecker has interpreted it all for us, hasn't she? "

There was just a tinge of bitterness in her voice.

" And... and I don't like — " She stopped. " What do you think of it all? It's your first visit, isn't it? "

Nevill drew out a cigarette before answering.

" Yes; it's my first visit. Of course it's very interesting and romantic. I suppose everybody feels that. But I still feel what I said the other day."

"Yes?"

" Well, I quite see the drama of it all; the very same service performed in the very same language, and all that, in the very same place where the slaves and so on heard it all those ages ago. And of course, as a Catholic "

" Go on," she said quietly.

" Well, of course, as a Catholic, I think it very sacred and all that. But, you know, it seems to me they've missed the point, somehow.... I can't imagine what I should have done if I'd been a Christian in those days," he added rather irrelevantly.

" Don't you think that it was fresh and new then — in the same way that... that other things are fresh and new now? We... we should both have been Christians— I mean, really fervent Christians, then, I think."

" By George! " said Nevill. " I believe you've hit it. You mean that since we don't live in those days, Christianity seems — well — rather stale; that... that it is stale. I don't mean that it isn't true," he went on rather anxiously; "that's different: but that the spirit of it is stale and... and conventional. And that the point, just now, lies somewhere else."

She bowed her head in assent.

His delight was deepening into something rather like ecstasy. Never in the whole of his life had he met anyone who understood, as she did, this particular side of his nature. More than that, she illuminated it and made it coherent, it seemed. His deep little convictions, half-formed and inchoate, his views about health and freshness and solitude — even of qualified solitude — those were coming out from him, one by one, drawn by the warmth of her presence, and really they were not so bad after all.

It appeared to him that she must be extraordinarily spiritual and good, to understand like this. He had had no conception that women could be like this, so delicately strong, so resonant, so to speak, instead of flabby.. He turned to look at her a little more lowly, excited by his pleasure; and what he saw flushed his intellectual happiness with an even more elementary emotion.

She was leaning back again now, against the old lichened wall, with her head thrown back, and her big grey eyes looking out across the sunlit garden. She had unbound her hat, and the scarf lay in her lap, and the broad soft black straw cast a mystical shadow down to her well-marked eyebrows. Her complexion was perfect of its kind; her face and her slender throat were of an uniform pallor, but without a hint of ill-health. Her long ungloved hands lay half twisted in the gauze over her knees. Behind her, brightening her as an appropriate frame sets off a good picture, was a sheet of tall lily-heads, and beyond them the garden, and beyond the garden, once more, Rome.

He looked at this for an instant. Then he went on.

" Well, all that fits in, doesn't it, with what we agreed about, the other day? We don't want this sort of thing now. I suppose there are some people who must have it — all the morbid and dark side. But... but it isn't the best. After all, the Catacombs are underground, and we aren't — not yet. I'd much sooner be buried at sea, as a matter of fact. Wouldn't you?"

" I know what you mean," she said.

" Of course Death and so on are facts. I'm not a fool or... or a Christian Scientist. But why in the world think about them — least of all in anything that resembles religion? I can't help thinking "

" How are your headaches, by the way? — Oh! I promised not to ask, didn't I? "

He made an impatient movement with his cigarette, flicking off the ash. She had turned abruptly to ask her question, and was still looking at him.

" Oh! they're all right. At least, I take my medicine regularly ' '

"You take medicine? They're as bad as that? You've seen a doctor? What did he say?"

She asked sharply and concernedly. It gave him a little thrill of delight, in spite of his words.

" Oh! let's leave all that "

" No; but tell me, and then I won't ask any more."

" I went a couple of months ago. He told me that... that I had headaches. And then he told me to take some medicine. And then I paid him a guinea — no, two, because it was my first visit. And he told me to come again as soon as I got back from Rome."

" Did he... did he seem to think it serious? "

" Lord, no! Not nearly so serious as I thought it myself, anyhow. I told him so, too."

"What did he say?"

" He laughed."

" Who was he? "

" Matthieson, the brain-man. You see, the local doctor recommended him. He's supposed to know everything that is to be known, about the inside of all our heads."

" He's a surgeon, isn't he? "

" I believe so. He didn't surge me, anyhow, or even hint at it. That would be a bit too much — to make a hole in your head to let out a headache. I hate doctors."

" Yes, I see."

" Well, I hate being reminded of that sort of thing. I believe the way to keep well is not to think about it."

" You went, though."

" Well, I couldn't stand the thing any more.... Now, Miss Bessington, for heaven's sake let's leave that, and "

" But you'll go and see him again, won't you, as soon as you get back, as he told you? "

Her voice trembled, ever so little; and even the heaviest fool could not have helped being flattered by it. And Nevill was not a fool at all.

He turned and looked straight at her. He knew it was unfair, yet the chance of making a tiny advance towards yet further intimacy was too tempting.

" You wish me to? " he said.

She flushed divinely; and then it was her turn to switch back the conversation.

" Of course I wish all my friends to go and see doctors if they're ill. I'm not a Christian Scientist either, you know. Now go on with what you were saying."

So then, they sat and talked in the sunlight.

Voices came and went from beyond the wall, now and again. Once a bearded lay-brother went past them in silence as they sat there, not even turning his eyes. It gave Nevill another little text; and when the footsteps had died away, he made his remarks.

" Now there's another illustration. Of course I know they're very holy people and all that; and I've not the slightest doubt that they think all the rest of us very worldly and all that. And yet, you know, I'm as convinced as much as I'm convinced of anything in the world, that that's not the way to do it. If they lived up here in the garden all the time, it would be another matter. But they don't. They have their endless services, out of books, and meditate on death, and deliberately give themselves pain."

" Pain's a kind of physical sin, don't you think? " said Enid suddenly.

" That's exactly it! " he cried in delight. " It's a thing to be resisted. It's hateful and detestable. I'd make acts of contrition for my headaches, if... if I thought that was the best way to repent of them. And as for amendment — well, I'm sure I ask nothing better."

He walked up from his hotel to see the sunset from the Pincian that evening; and his mood was such that, viewing from afar the spruce figures of Mr. Hecker and Mr. Clough advancing towards him, as he came up towards the church of the Trinita, he slipped swiftly into a small curiosity-shop, in order to avoid them. Thence, as in the dark interior he examined a plate of rings and charms on the counter, he saw them go briskly past. He still determined to give them two or three minutes to get well out of sight; and then, for very shame, felt himself obliged to buy something. He had almost decided on a small silver crucifix, when something else caught his eye, and he held it up, demanding what it was.

" That is a seal, sir," said the man in broken French.

Nevill said he knew that, but what was the device?

" That is the snake of...of Aesculape/' said the man, " the god of health."

" I'll take that," said Nevill.

The view was superb, when he reached it.

The crowd on the top of the facade of the Pincian was so dense that he made no attempt to penetrate it; but he moved on to a comparatively empty space beyond, and sat down.

First he looked at the view.

Far beneath him stretched Rome. Roofs, towers, spires, here and there broken by wide spaces and the gulf of narrow streets, lay in one huddled mass, glorious in the evening light. Yet these appeared almost small, so tremendous and dominant was the great dome, which this morning he had seen so tiny, yet even then dominant, from the enclosure of St. Calixtus' Cemetery. There it hung, of an indescribable blue, floating, it seemed, rather than supported from beneath — floating, and transfused in a very sea of splendour, since the western sky not only lay behind it but streamed through it, shining clear through the windows beneath the dome, as if light dwelt within as well as without the tabernacle in which the body of Peter the Fisherman lay enshrined.

It was this, of course, on which his eyes dwelt. They came back and back to it; there seemed no escape. The Jews had done their best; yet the dome of the great Synagogue resembled a vulgar nouveau riche beside this kingly dignity. The Government was doing its best; yet the huge Palace of Justice seemed a house of cards. There was no question about it. St. Peter's remained inviolate.

And then the boy's eyes fell on another sight; and he almost sighed with relief. For, out to the right, poised on some tall hill of which he did not know the name, was a line of umbrella-pines, as fine as lace, incredibly distinct, since every branch, and (it appeared from here) almost every twig, stood against the soft, rosy flush of the heavens. They, at least, were rivals of the dome; and they lived, while the dome enshrined, at the very best, only the dead body of a saint....

He turned presently and looked at the crowd.

They were of every nationality; yet their nationalities did not divide them. One line only cut them sharply into two camps. There were the ecclesiastics, and there were the laity. That, he thought he understood, was the essential difference. It is true that they were mingled, physically; yet it appeared to the young man as if an unspannable gulf lay between them. There went a serpent of black-cassocked seminarians — younger men even than himself, probably — going swiftly and steadily back, with flying sleeves, towards their college before Ave Maria should ring: and there played a group of children, with shrill cries, about a trimmed black poodle who barked in the midst. There an old priest leaned on the parapet, melancholy and brooding: and, within a yard of him, came a well-fed townsman, bold-eyed, light-bearded, in a well-cut suit, twirling a stick. There were the two camps; the former, with a terrible adequateness, preached and insisted upon pain and death, as elements of life, as symbolised (it might be said) by the sign of the Cross; those, however inadequately, stood for the joy of life and simplicity and naturalness. It was not that Nevill liked the town-type; he hated it. Yet it was the nearer to the essential system of things, he thought, because more unstudied than the precise definitions of theology.

So he sat; and so he considered; and mingled with all his considerations was the image of the girl with whom he had talked as he had never talked with any other.

There was his aunt at home. He was exceedingly fond of her; and there were certain kinds of things on which he could talk with her with utter confidence. If people were in trouble, he could imagine no more soothing comforter than Aunt Anna: once or twice lately, since he had come into his estate, he had had cases to deal with; there was a girl who needed an adviser; there was a mother who had lost her only son. Well, obviously, Aunt Anna was indicated. Or there were the Jesuit Fathers at his old school; there was the Jesuit Father at Farm Street whom he occasionally consulted spiritually — well, he could say things to those priests he could say to no one else. But he could not say the kind of things to them he had said to Enid: they simply would not understand; they would produce some dogma; they would argue that it was scarcely likely that the Catholic philosophers — even apart from dogma — were wrong, and the pagan right. They would be sympathetic and kindly and understanding, — understanding, that is, down to a certain level, yet utterly incapable of penetrating a hair's breadth below that level. At the most they would just sum him up as " tainted " by modern agnosticism.

Finally, there were the men he knew, many of whom had been with him at Stonyhurst. And to those perhaps least of all could he give his confidences. He could be genial and familiar with them; he could lend them five pounds, or borrow them. But the relationship was really extraordinarily artificial; he could not possibly touch on certain things. And, even if he could, he knew what the response would be. One type would clap him on the back and tell him to go and take a blue pill; the other type would be grave, and tell him to go and talk to Father

So-and-so. Whereas with Enid And he had scarcely known her more than ten days!

As the sky deepened and glowed above him, and as the evening chill began to drive home the prudent Roman crowd — (ten minutes ago the last child had been towed away by a voluble nurse) — as the lights began to glimmer in the City beneath, and the ilex leaves above him to shiver in the faint breeze, which, bike the sigh of a man as sleep begins to win upon him, marked the last movement of life before the stillness of the night; he began to see, he thought, the unity of all this. It was like a silent presence coming into a room which just now had been filled by conversationalists. All these minute and diverse details, — even the roll of the wheels, from the great cobbled circus beneath, clearer and sharper than even ten minutes ago, the tossing rustle of the leaves, the lights that winked, went out, and then kindled again — those things seemed to him merged and fused together by the encompassing sky that was darkening so swiftly, into one coherent spirit — a spirit of calm and assurance and freshness. And, as he saw this, he saw too, he thought, that this was what he had found in Enid. She had silences, like these, slight yet infinitely significant movements, as when she turned and said something, looking at him as she spoke; and then silences again.... It was all one; one great and quiet spirit that penetrated the very depths of his heart; a spirituality that depended upon no forms, and therefore was limited by none; a comprehension that needed no words to express itself in.

Then, as he looked out over the shadowy dome at the sky, passing itself, even as he watched, from luminousness to opacity, there came out a single star, that shook for an instant, like a light he had seen just now in the City, and then, again, like that light, settled down into steadiness.... The great spirit had gathered itself to a point....

He went up to his private sitting-room, almost immediately after a cup of coffee and a cigarette in the lounge of his hotel. The sight of all these people became a burden. What were they all about? A couple of men talked over cigars in a discreet manner in one corner, eyeing all the while every movement among the rest, following with their eyes a particularly superb-looking lady who wore an orange velvet dress; a very domestic party, with an Anglican clerical father in the midst, laughed and talked with true British reserve over some ridiculous card-game. Two old ladies in caps, with ribbons, bent their old heads together and murmured gossip, no doubt, over their crochet-work. They all appeared to him like marionettes, like shadow-figures on a screen, that jerked about with a semblance of life, but had no insides, so to speak. They were not really alive at all. They knew nothing worth knowing. So he went upstairs.

It was an excellent room, so far as hotel-rooms can be excellent; and he had done what he could to improve it. A bronze of Antinous he had bought during his second day in Rome stood on a pedestal of carved wood he had bought for it at the same time. A couple of old oil-paintings rested on the mantel-shelf; a gorgeous piece of antique silk, emblazoned all over with bees and, in the midst with a Cardinal's hat and arms, lay over the corner of the screen. All those would be sent straight back to Hartley when he left.

His writing-table, too, looked homely. A couple of big silver frames held photographs — the one of a passionate-looking old man, the other of a middle-aged woman, grey-haired, with a young face, with a boy in a sailor-suit. These were, respectively, his father, and his Aunt Anna, with Jim, her son. He stood looking at the second of these for a few seconds.

Then he went through into his bedroom, turning on the light as he did so, and hunted about on his dressing-table. But he could not find what he wanted. He came back into the sitting-room, and touched the bell; and then before it could be answered, sat down at his writing-table, took out a sheet of paper, and prepared to write.

" Yessir," came a discreet voice presently.

" Oh — er — Charleson — did you turn a seal out of my waistcoat pockets — the waistcoat I wore this afternoon? "

" Yessir. Put it into the drawer of the dressing-table, Sir Nevill."

" Oh! get it, will you? I couldn't find it."

"Yes, Sir Nevill."

The man came back presently, and laid it by his elbow.

" Anything more, Sir Nevill? "

" No.... Oh, yes. I said we'd leave on Easter Monday. I've changed my plans. I'm not sure. I'll let you know when we'll go."

" Yessir."

" And— Charleson "

"Yessir?"

" I shall leave a note here, with a little box, when I go to bed. See that they're both taken to-morrow morning, early, to the address. That's all. I shan't want you again, Charleson. Good-night."

" Thank you, Sir Nevill. Good-night, Sir Nevill."