the service at the hotel she went
there expecting to get some pleasure from her passage across the garden
and through the hall of the hotel, although it was very doubtful whether
she would see Terence, or at any rate have the chance of speaking to
him.

As the greater number of visitors at the hotel were English, there was
almost as much difference between Sunday and Wednesday as there is in
England, and Sunday appeared here as there, the mute black ghost or
penitent spirit of the busy weekday. The English could not pale the
sunshine, but they could in some miraculous way slow down the hours,
dull the incidents, lengthen the meals, and make even the servants and
page-boys wear a look of boredom and propriety. The best clothes which
every one put on helped the general effect; it seemed that no lady could
sit down without bending a clean starched petticoat, and no gentleman
could breathe without a sudden crackle from a stiff shirt-front. As the
hands of the clock neared eleven, on this particular Sunday, various
people tended to draw together in the hall, clasping little red-leaved
books in their hands. The clock marked a few minutes to the hour when
a stout black figure passed through the hall with a preoccupied
expression, as though he would rather not recognise salutations,
although aware of them, and disappeared down the corridor which led from
it.

"Mr. Bax," Mrs. Thornbury whispered.

The little group of people then began to move off in the same direction
as the stout black figure. Looked at in an odd way by people who made
no effort to join them, they moved with one exception slowly and
consciously towards the stairs. Mrs. Flushing was the exception. She
came running downstairs, strode across the hall, joined the procession
much out of breath, demanding of Mrs. Thornbury in an agitated whisper,
"Where, where?"

"We are all going," said Mrs. Thornbury gently, and soon they were
descending the stairs two by two. Rachel was among the first to descend.
She did not see that Terence and Hirst came in at the rear possessed of
no black volume, but of one thin book bound in light-blue cloth, which
St. John carried under his arm.

The chapel was the old chapel of the monks. It was a profound cool place
where they had said Mass for hundreds of years, and done penance in
the cold moonlight, and worshipped old brown pictures and carved saints
which stood with upraised hands of blessing in the hollows in the walls.
The tr