oject appear practical, Mark had an inspiration to take the habit of a
preaching friar. Why should he not persuade Dorward to join him?
Together they would tramp the English country, compelling even the
dullest yokels to hear the word of God . . . discalced . . . over hill,
down dale . . . telling stories of the saints and martyrs in remote inns
. . . deep lanes . . . the butterflies and the birds . . . Dorward
should say Mass in the heart of great woods . . . over hill, down dale
. . . discalced . . . preaching to men of Christ. . . .

Mark fell asleep.

In the morning Mark heard Mass at the church of the Cowley Fathers, a
strengthening experience, because the Gregorian there so strictly and so
austerely chanted without any consideration for sentimental humanity
possessed that very effect of liberating and purifying spirit held in
the bonds of flesh which is conveyed by the wind blowing through a grove
of pines or by waves quiring below a rocky shore.

If Mark had had the least inclination to be sorry for himself and
indulge in the flattery of regret, it vanished in this music. Rolling
down through time on the billows of the mighty Gregorian it were as
grotesque to pity oneself as it were for an Arctic explorer to build a
snowman for company at the North Pole.

Mark came out of St. John's, Cowley, into the suburban prettiness of
Iffley Road, where men and women in their Sunday best tripped along in
the April sunlight, tripped along in their Sunday best like newly
hatched butterflies and beetles. Mark went in and out of colleges all
day long, forgetting about the problem of his immediate future just as
he forgot that the people in the sunny streets were not really
butterflies and beetles. At twilight he decided to attend Evensong at
St. Barnabas'. Perhaps the folk in the sunny April streets had turned
his thoughts unconsciously toward the simple aspirations of simple
human nature. He felt when he came into the warm candle-lit church like
one who has voyaged far and is glad to be at home again. How everybody
sang together that night, and how pleasant Mark found this
congregational outburst. It was all so jolly that if the organist had
suddenly turned round like an Italian organ-grinder and kissed his
fingers to the congregation, his action would have seemed perfectly
appropriate. Even during the _Magnificat_, when the altar was being
censed, the tinkling of the thurible reminded Mark of a tambourine; and
the lighting