respectable. I don't
know much about these things, but surely you of all people don't want to
go shouting in the street like a Salvation Army Captain. I can't see that
that is more 'in touch with reality.' Peter, what do you mean? Are not
St. John's, and the Canon, and my people, and myself, real? Surely,
Peter, our love is real, isn't it? Oh, how can you doubt that?

"Darling boy, don't you think you are over-strained and over-worried? You
are in a strange country, among strange people, at a very peculiar time.
War always upsets everything and makes things abnormal. London, even,
isn't normal, but, as the Canon said the other day, a great many of the
things people do just now are due to reaction against strain and anxiety.
Can't you see this? Isn't there any clergyman you can go and talk to?
Your Presbyterian and other new friends and your visits to Roman Catholic
churches can't be any real help.

"Peter, dear, for my sake, do, _do_ try to see things like this. I _hate_
that bit in your letter about publicans and sinners. How can a clergyman
expect _them_ to help _him_? Surely you ought to avoid such people, not
seek their company. It is so like you to get hold of a text or two and
run it to death. It's not that I don't _trust_ you, but you are so easily
influenced, and you may equally easily go and do something that will
separate us and ruin your life. Peter, I hate to write like this, but I
can't help it...."

Peter let the sheets fall from his hands and stared out of the little
window. The gulls were screaming and fighting over some refuse in the
harbour, and he watched the beat of their wings, fascinated. If only he,
too, could catch the wind and be up and away like that!

He jumped up and paced up and down the floor restlessly, and he told
himself that Hilda was right and he was a cad and worse. Julie's kiss on
his lips burned there yet. That at any rate was wrong; by any standards
he had no right to behave so. How could he kiss her when he was pledged
to Hilda--Hilda to whom everyone had looked up, the capable, lady-like,
irreproachable Hilda, the Hilda to whom Park Lane and St. John's were
such admirable setting. And who was he, after all, to set aside all that
for which both those things stood?

And yet.... He sat down by the little table and groaned.

"What the dickens is the matter with you, padre?"

Peter started and looked round. In the doorway stood Pennell, regarding
him with amusement. "Here am I