her words. He finished his
breakfast quickly, and very soon went out. He crossed the Square, and
passed East, down two crowded streets to his church. In the traffic of
those streets, all slipshod and confused, his black-clothed figure and
grave face, with its Vandyk beard, had a curious remote appearance, like
a moving remnant of a past civilisation. He went in by the side door.
Only five days he had been away, but they had been so full of emotion
that the empty familiar building seemed almost strange to him. He had
come there unconsciously, groping for anchorage and guidance in this
sudden change of relationship between him and his daughters. He stood by
the pale brazen eagle, staring into the chancel. The choir were wanting
new hymn-books--he must not forget to order them! His eyes sought the
stained-glass window he had put in to the memory of his wife. The sun,
too high to slant, was burnishing its base, till it glowed of a deep
sherry colour. "In the next world!" What strange words of Noel's! His
eyes caught the glimmer of the organ-pipes; and, mounting to the loft, he
began to play soft chords wandering into each other. He finished, and
stood gazing down. This space within high walls, under high vaulted
roof, where light was toned to a perpetual twilight, broken here and
there by a little glow of colour from glass and flowers, metal, and dark
wood, was his home, his charge, his refuge. Nothing moved down there,
and yet--was not emptiness mysteriously living, the closed-in air
imprinted in strange sort, as though the drone of music and voices in
prayer and praise clung there still? Had not sanctity a presence?
Outside, a barrel-organ drove its tune along; a wagon staggered on the
paved street, and the driver shouted to his horses; some distant guns
boomed out in practice, and the rolling of wheels on wheels formed a net
of sound. But those invading noises were transmuted to a mere murmuring
in here; only the silence and the twilight were real to Pierson, standing
there, a little black figure in a great empty space.

When he left the church, it was still rather early to go to Leila's
hospital; and, having ordered the new hymn-books, he called in at the
house of a parishioner whose son had been killed in France. He found her
in her kitchen; an oldish woman who lived by charing. She wiped a seat
for the Vicar.

"I was just makin' meself a cup o' tea, sir."

"Ah! What a comfort tea is, Mrs. Soles!"