ut at week-night services. To
Alice and Narcissus there were two Sabbaths in the week, Sunday and
Wednesday. I suppose they were far from being the only young people
interested in their particular form of church-work. Leander met Hero, it
will be remembered, on the way to church, and the Reader may recall
Marlowe's beautiful description of her dress upon that fatal morning:

'The outside of her garments were of lawn,
The lining purple silk, with gilt stars drawn;
Her wide sleeves green, and bordered with a grove,
Where Venus in her naked glory strove
To please the careless and disdainful eyes
Of proud Adonis, that before her lies;
Her kirtle blue, whereon was many a stain,
Made with the blood of wretched lovers slain....'

Alice wore pretty dresses too, if less elaborate; and, despite its
change of name, was not the church where she and Narcissus met, as the
church wherein Hero and Leander first looked upon each other, the Temple
of Love? Certainly the country church to which Narcissus
self-consciously passed through groups of Sunday-clothed villagers, was
decked as for no Christian festival this Sabbath morning. The garlands
that twined about the old Norman columns, the clumps of primroses and
violets that sprung at their feet, as at the roots of gigantic beeches,
the branches of palm and black-thorn that transformed the chancel to a
bower: probably for more than knew it, these symbols of the joy and
beauty of earth had simpler, more instinctive, meanings than those of
any arbitrary creed. For others in the church besides Narcissus, no
doubt, they spoke of young love, the bloom and the fragrance thereof, of
mating birds and pairing men and maids, of the eternal principle of
loveliness, which, in spite of winter and of wrong, brings flowers and
faces to bless and beautify this church of the world.

As Narcissus sat in his front row, his eyes drawn up in a prayer to the
painted glories of the great east window, his whole soul lifted up on
the wings of colour, scent, and sound--the whole sacred house had but
one meaning: just his love for Alice. Nothing in the world was too holy
to image that. The windows, the music, the flowers, all were metaphors
of her: and, as the organ swirled his soul along in the rapids of its
passionate, prayerful sound, it seemed to him that Alice and he already
stood at the gate of Heaven!

Presently, across his mingled sensations came a measured tramp as of
boy-soldiers ma