would you like to come out to-night, or would you rather be quiet at
home?" It would be safe to return home by half-past seven, he thought.

She said, in a small muffled voice, that she didn't care.

A tall figure passed by them in the narrow alley, looming through the
fog. Rhoda started, and shrank back against the brick wall, clutching
Peter's arm. The next moment the figure passed into the circle of light
thrown down by a high lamp that glimmered over a Robbia-esque plaque
shrine let into the wall, and they saw that it was a cassocked priest
from the clergy-house going into church. Rhoda let out her breath faintly
in a sigh, and her fingers fell from Peter's coat-sleeve.

"Oh," she whispered, "I'm frightened.... Let's stay close to the church;
just outside the door, where we can see the light and hear the music. I
don't want to go out into the streets to-night, Peter, I want to stay
here. I'm ... so frightened."

"Come inside," suggested Peter, as they turned back to the church. "It
would be warmer."

But she shook her head. "No. I'd rather be outside. I don't belong in
there."

Peter said, "Why not?" and she told him, "Because for me it's the ugly
things that are true."

So together they stood in the porch, outside the great oak door, and
heard the sound of singing stealing out, fog-softened, and smelt the
smell of incense (it was the festal service of some saint) that pierced
the thick air with its pungent sweetness.

They sat down on the seat in the porch, and Rhoda shivered, not with
cold, and Peter waited by her very patiently, knowing that she needed him
as she had never needed him before.

She told him so. "You don't _mind_ staying, Peter? I feel safer with you
than with anyone else.... You see, I'm afraid.... Oh, I can't tell you
how it is I feel. When he looks at me it's as if he was drawing me and
dragging me, and I feel I must get up and follow him wherever he goes.
It's always been like that, since first I met him, more than a year ago.
He made me care; he made me worship the ground he walked on; if he'd
thrown me down and kicked me, I'd have let him. But he never cared
himself; I know that now. I've known it a long time. And I've vowed to
myself, and I vowed to mother when she lay dying, that I wouldn't let him
have anything more to do with me. He frightens me, because he can twist
me round his finger and make me care so ... and it hurts.... And he's
just playing; he'll never really care. But