arm. "I'm going to get a bus at the Circus."
"All right. I'll see you there." She laughed and flushed, and they walked
on together. Delane looked at her with curiosity. High cheek-bones--a red
spot of colour on them--a sharp chin--small, emaciated features, and
beautiful deep eyes. Phthisical!--like himself--poor little wretch! He
found out that she was a waitress in a cheap eating-house, and had very
long hours. "Jolly good pay, though, compared to what it used to be! Why,
with tips, on a good day, I can make seven and eight shillings. That's
good, ain't it? And now the war's goin' to stop. Do you think I want it
to stop? I don't think! Me and my sister'll be starvin' again, I
suppose?"

He found out she was an orphan, living with her sister, who was a typist,
in Kentish town. But she refused to tell him her address, which he idly
asked her. "What did you want with it?" she said, with a sudden frown.
"I'm straight, I am. There's my bus! Night! night!--So long!" And with a
half-sarcastic wave of her tiny hand, she left him, and was soon engulfed
in the swirl round a north-bound bus.

He wandered on along Regent Street, and Waterloo Place, down the Duke of
York's steps into the Mall, where some captured guns were already in
position, with children swarming about them; and so through St. James's
Park to the Abbey. The fog was now all but clear, and there were frosty
stars overhead. The Abbey towers rose out of a purple haze, etherially
pale and moon-touched. The House of Commons was sitting, but there was
still no light on the Clock Tower, and no unmuffling of the lamps. London
was waiting, as the world was waiting, for the next step in the vast
drama which had three continents for its setting; and meanwhile, save for
the added movements in the streets, and a new something in the faces of
the crowds hurrying along the pavements, there was nothing to show that
all was in fact over, and the war won.

Delane followed a stream of people entering the Abbey through the north
transept. He was carried on by them, till a verger showed him into a seat
near the choir, and he mechanically obeyed, and dropped on his knees.

When he rose from them, the choir was filing in, and the vergers with
their pokers were escorting the officiating Canon to his seat. Delane had
not been inside a church for two or three years, and it was a good deal
more since he had stood last in Westminster Abbey. But as he watched the
once familiar spectacle