ing at her and wondering. She would have been glad of
the young railway porter's company now, if he had turned up, and would
have welcomed him as a sort of refuge.

He sat and smoked on a bench by the sea front, however, all unaware of
the opportunity that was rushing past him, never to return. At the
last insistent "Come!" Caroline caught sight of Lillie with a young man
rounding the next bend of the road, and the idea of being pitied for
her solitary condition made her march straight up the flagged path to
the church door, as if she had meant going ever since leaving home.

But once inside the church, she experienced a gradual cessation of that
prickling awareness of other people's thoughts and other people's eyes
which had been so uncomfortable on the road. For she was familiar with
the service--having gone to the Sunday school in childhood and attended
church at times since, though the Creddles were chapel folk--so that
the places in the Prayer Book came automatically to her fingers, and
the soothing flow of the words gave her a chance to come to herself.
She did not worship in any real sense of the word, but her mind was,
despite itself, attuned to peace. "From all the perils and dangers of
this night----" Then, after an interval during which the sunset struck
golden across a tomb in the chancel: "The grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ . . . now and for evermore. Amen."

She rose from her knees and her glance fell upon Miss Ethel, who sat a
fair distance away in the sparsely filled side aisle. She wondered
whether Miss Ethel were a really religious sort or not--you never heard
her mention a word about it, and she seemed so up against everything----

Then the hymn--old-fashioned because the Vicar was away and the elderly
organist who had chosen it liked that kind best. Perhaps he knew that
all religion must at the last be a matter of feeling and not of reason,
for he had lived such a long time in the world and really loved God.
But the strange preacher who was going to occupy the pulpit looked down
the church at the congregation singing and felt they required a great
deal of sound teaching. So, being a good man with a high ethical
standard, he stepped up into the pulpit and did his best during the
opportunity which was at his disposal to correct the effect of what he
considered sentimental doggerel.

But as Caroline listened to him, she felt his explanations of a
reasonable faith washing away from her mind