And
there are hundreds like that who care for God about as much as a cherry
stone, but who will not hear him spoken against. If it were suggested to
them to go to a hotel, they would think it infamous, but it seems to
them quite simple to make love at the foot of the altar."

He walked slowly along the edge of the fountain, and then again looked
at the church clock, which was two minutes faster than his watch. It was
five minutes past three. He thought that he would be more comfortable
inside, and entered the church. The coolness of a cellar assailed him,
he breathed it with pleasure, and then took a turn round the nave to
reconnoiter the place. Other regular footsteps, sometimes halting and
then beginning anew, replied from the further end of the vast pile to
the sound of his own, which rang sonorously beneath the vaulted roof. A
curiosity to know who this other promenader was seized him. It was a
stout, bald-headed gentleman who was strolling about with his nose in
the air, and his hat behind his back. Here and there an old woman was
praying, her face hidden in her hands. A sensation of solitude and rest
stole over the mind. The light, softened by the stained-glass windows,
was refreshing to the eyes. Du Roy thought that it was "deucedly
comfortable" inside there.

He returned towards the door and again looked at his watch. It was still
only a quarter-past three. He sat down at the entrance to the main
aisle, regretting that one could not smoke a cigarette. The slow
footsteps of the stout gentleman could still be heard at the further end
of the church, near the choir.

Someone came in, and George turned sharply round. It was a poor woman in
a woolen skirt, who fell on her knees close to the first chair, and
remained motionless, with clasped hands, her eyes turned to heaven, her
soul absorbed in prayer. Du Roy watched her with interest, asking
himself what grief, what pain, what despair could have crushed her
heart. She was worn out by poverty, it was plain. She had, perhaps, too,
a husband who was beating her to death, or a dying child. He murmured
mentally: "Poor creatures. How some of them do suffer." Anger rose up in
him against pitiless Nature. Then he reflected that these poor wretches
believed, at any rate, that they were taken into consideration up above,
and that they were duly entered in the registers of heaven with a debtor
and creditor balance. Up above! And Du Roy, whom the silence of the
church inclin