about myself. I want to talk about my sister. She's going
to play at the King's Hall concert to-morrow night. You will come, won't
you?"

"Of course I will," said the priest.

"Thanks, and--er--if you could think about her when you're saying Mass
to-morrow morning, why, I'd rather like to serve you, if I may. I must
tear back now," Michael added. "Good night."

"Good night," said the priest, and as Michael turned in the doorway his
smile was like a benediction.

Very early on the next morning through the curdled October mists Michael
went over to Notting Hill again. The Mission Church stood obscurely
amid a press of mean houses, and as Michael hurried along the fetid
narrow thoroughfare, the bell for Mass was clanging among the fog and
smoke. Here and there women were belabouring their doorsteps with mangy
mats or leaning with grimed elbows on their sills in depressed
anticipation of a day's drudgery. From bed-ridden rooms came the sound
of children wailing and fighting over breakfast. Lean cats nosed in the
garbage strewn along the gutters.

The Mission Church smelt strongly of soap and stale incense, and in the
frore atmosphere the coloured pictures on the walls looked more than
usually crude and violent. It was the Octave of St. Michael and All
Angels, and the white chrysanthemums on the altar were beginning to turn
brown. There was not a large congregation--two sisters of mercy, three
or four pious and dowdy maiden ladies, and the sacristan. It was more
than two years since Michael had served at Mass, and he was glad and
grateful to find that every small ceremony still seemed sincere and fit
and inevitable. There was an exquisite morning stillness in this small
tawdry church, and Michael thought how strange it was that in this
festering corner of the city it was possible to create so profound a
sense of mystery. Whatever emotion he gained of peace and reconciliation
and brooding holiness he vowed to Stella and to her fame and to her joy.

After Mass Michael went back to breakfast with Mr. Viner, and as they
sat talking about Oxford, Michael thought how various Oxford was
compared with school, how many different kinds of people would be
appropriate to their surroundings, and he began with some of the ardour
that he had given hitherto to envy of life to covet all varieties of
intellectual experience. What a wonderfully suggestive word was
University, and how exciting it was to see Viner tabulating
introduction