big babies, but from a generation of babies is born
occasionally the master. Women get so used to the rule that they forget
the exception. When he comes, then, they are troubled.

But this was not all Hilda's religion. For some mysterious reason this
product of a highly civilised community had the elemental in her. Men and
women both have got to eliminate all trace of sex before they can
altogether escape that. In other words, because in her lay latent the
power of birth, in which moment she would be cloistered alone in a dark
and silent room with infinity, she clung unreasonably and all but
unconsciously to certain superstitions which she shared with primitive
savages and fetish-worshippers. All of which seems a far cry from the War
Intercession Services at wealthy and fashionable St. John's, but it was
nothing more or less than this which was causing her to kneel on a high
hassock, elbows comfortably on the prayer-rail, and her face in her
hands, on a certain Friday evening in the week after Peter's arrival in
France, while the senior curate (after suitable pauses, during which her
mind was uncontrollably busy with an infinite number of things, ranging
from the doings of Peter in France to the increasing difficulty of
obtaining silk stockings), intoned the excellent stately English of
the Prayers set forth by Authority in Time of War.

Two pews ahead of her knelt Sir Robert Doyle, in uniform. That simple
soldier was a bigger child than most men, and was, therefore, still
conscious of a number of unfathomable things about him, for the which
Hilda, his godchild, adored and loved him as a mother will adore her
child who sits in a field of buttercups and sees, not minted, nor
botanical, but heavenly gold. He was all the more lovable, because he
conceived that he was much bigger and stronger than she, and perfectly
capable of looking after her. In that, he was like a plucky boy who gets
up from his buttercups to tell his mother not to be frightened when a cow
comes into the field.

They went out together, and greeted each other in the porch.
"Good-evening, child," said the soldier, with a smile. "And how's Peter?"

Hilda smiled back, but after a rather wintry fashion, which the man was
quick to note. "I couldn't have told you fresh news yesterday," she said,
"but I had a letter this morning all about his first Sunday. He's at
Rouen at a rest camp for the present, though he thinks he's likely to be
moved almost at once;