must I; I've an appointment," said Doyle. "But all right, old friend,
to-morrow at the club. But you're younger than I, Chichester, or perhaps
you parsons don't get old as quickly!"

They shook hands and parted. Sir Robert was busy for an hour, and came
out again with his head full of the proposed plans for the aerial defence
of London. "Taxi, sir?" he was asked at the door. "No," he replied; "I'll
walk home."

"Best way to think, walking at night," he said to himself as he turned
down Whitehall, through the all but empty streets, darkened as they were.
The meaning of those great familiar spaces struck him as he walked.
Hardly formulating it, he became aware of a sense of pride and
responsibility as he passed scene after scene of England's past glory.
The old Abbey towered up in the moonlight, solemn and still, but almost
as if animate and looking at him. He felt small and old as he passed into
Victoria Street. There the Stores by night made him smile at the
contrast, but in Ashley Gardens Westminster Cathedral made him frown. If
he hated anything, it was that for which it stood. Romanism meant to him
something effeminate, sneaking, monstrous.... That there should be
Englishmen to build such a place positively angered him. He was not
exactly a bigot or a fanatic; he would not have repealed the Emancipation
Acts; and he would have said that if anyone wanted to be a Romanist,
he had better be one. But he would not have had time for anyone who did
so want, and if he should have had to have by any chance dealings with a
priest, he would have been so frigidly polite that the poor fellow would
probably have been frozen solid. Of course, Irishmen were different,
and he had known some capital fellows, Irish priests and chaplains....

And then he saw two men ahead of him. They were privates on leave and
drunk, but not hopelessly drunk. They were trying to negotiate the blank
of the entrance to the Catholic Soldiers' Hut in the protecting wall
which guarded the pavement just beyond the cathedral. As Sir Robert came
within earshot, one of them stumbled through it and collapsed profanely.
He halted for a second irresolutely, with the officer's hesitancy at
meddling with a drunken man.

The fellow on the ground tried to raise himself, and got one elbow on the
gravel. This brought him into such a position that he stared straight at
the illuminated crucifix across the path, and but little farther in.

"Lor', blimey, Joe," he said