r,"
he said, "you're a weird blighter, but there's something damned gritty in
you. You take life too strenuously. Why can't you saunter through it like
I do?"

Peter reached for this cap. "Come on," he said again, "and don't talk
rot."

Out in the street, they strolled aimlessly on, more or less in silence.
The big book-shop at the corner detained them for a little, and they
regarded its variegated contents through the glass. It contained a few
good prints, and many more poorly executed coloured pictures of ruined
places in France and Belgium, of which a few, however, were not bad.
Cheek by jowl with some religious works, a statue of Notre Dame d'Albert,
and some more of Jeanne d'Arc, were a line of pornographic novels and
beyond packets of picture post-cards entitled _Theatreuses, Le Bain de la
Parisienne, Les Seins des Marbre_, and so on. Then Langton drew Graham's
attention to one or two other books, one of which had a gaudy cover
representing a mistress with a birch-rod in her hands and a number of
canes hung up beside her, while a girl of fifteen or so, with very red
cheeks, was apparently about to be whipped. "Good Lord," said Langton,
"the French are beyond me. This window is a study for you, Graham, in
itself. I should take it that it means that there is nothing real in
life. It is utterly cynical.

"'And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press,
End in what All begins and ends in--Yes;
Think then you are To-day what Yesterday
You were--To-morrow you shall not be less,'"

he quoted.

"Yes," said Peter. "Or else it means that there are only two realities,
and that the excellent person who keeps this establishment regards both
in a detached way, and conceives it her business to cater for each. Let's
go on."

They turned the corner, and presently found themselves outside the famous
carven door of the church. "Have you ever been round?" asked Peter.

"No," said Langton; "let's go in."

They passed through the door into the old church, which, in contrast to
that at Le Havre, was bathed in the daylight that streamed through many
clear windows. Together they wandered round it, saying little. They
inspected an eighteenth-century statue of St. Roch, who was pulling up
his robe to expose a wound and looking upwards at the same time
seraphically--or, at least, after the manner that the artist of that age
had regarded as seraphic. A number of white ribbons and some wax figures
of feet and hands and other parts o