to show you the way.
But you can't miss it. You can see the spire from the window. It's the
finest specimen of early Gothic in the north of France. The glass is
superb. There's an altar piece by Raphael or Botticelli, I forget which.
The screen is late Italian Renaissance, and there's a tomb in the west
transept which is supposed to be that of the Venerable Bede."

The girl got up and walked out of the room. I was not surprised.

"Thompson," I said, "what do you mean by behaving like a cad? Any one
could see that she is a nice girl; a lady, not that sort at all."

Thompson grinned.

"And as for that rigmarole of yours about the cathedral--what the
devil do you know about Italian Renaissance, or Botticelli or early
Gothic? I never heard such rot in my life. As a matter of fact I've
always heard that the glass in this cathedral is poor."

"All the same," said Thompson, "if she goes there she'll be pleased.
She'll find something she'll like a great deal better than stained
glass."

"As for the Venerable Bede," I said, "he was buried in Oxford if he
was buried anywhere, and I don't know that he was. He might have been
cremated, or minced up by high explosives so that they couldn't bury
him."

"I thought I recognized her," said Thompson, "I went over to her table
and had a good look to make sure."

"Don't pretend you know her," I said "She certainly didn't know you."

"I looked at her photograph five times at least last night while you
were asleep."

I thought this over for a minute. Then I said:

"You don't mean to tell me that she's the girl that boy is engaged to be
married to?"

"The exact same girl," said Thompson. "I couldn't be mistaken."

I meditated on the situation.

"I hope," I said, "that he won't have left the cathedral before she gets
there."

"No fear," said Thompson, "he's a most conscientious boy. Having started
out to do that cathedral he'll look at every stone of it before he
leaves. He'll be there for hours yet. What I'm afraid of is that she
won't go there."

"She started in the right direction," I said "I saw her out of the
window."

"I did my best anyhow," said Thompson. "I told her I wasn't going there.
She didn't like me. I could see that. If I'd let her think I was going
to the cathedral she'd have marched straight off to the station and sat
in the Ladies' Waiting-room till her train started."

The girl, it appeared, did visit the cathedral and the boy was there. He
was wai