he knew that that was not the last
word. And then and there he resolved that the last word should be spoken
on the morrow, that had, indeed, already come by the clock: she should
promise to marry him.

He slept, perhaps, for an hour or two, but he awoke with the dawn. The
grey light was stealing in at the windows, and Julie slept beside him in
the bed between. He tried to sleep again, but could not, and, on a
sudden, had an idea. He got quietly out of bed.

"What is it, Peter?" said Julie sleepily.

He went round and leaned over her. "I can't sleep any more, dearest," he
said. "I think I'll dress and go for a bit of a walk. Do you mind? I'll
be in to breakfast."

"No," she said. "Go if you want to. You are a restless old thing!"

He dressed silently, and kept the bathroom door closed as he bathed and
shaved. She was asleep again as he stole out, one arm flung loosely on
the counterpane, her hair untidy on the pillow. He kissed a lock of it,
and let himself quietly out of their suite.

It was still very early, and the Circus looked empty and strange. He
walked down Piccadilly, and wondered at the clean, soft touch of the
dawning day, and recalled another memorable Sunday morning walk. He
passed very familiar places, and was conscious of feeling an exile, an
inevitable one, but none the less an exile, for all that. And so he came
into St. James's Park, still as aimlessly as he had left the hotel.

Before him, clear as a pointing finger in the morning sky, was the
campanile of that stranger among the great cathedrals of England. It
attracted him for the first time, and he made all but unconsciously
towards it, Peter was not even in the spiritual street that leads to the
gates of the Catholic Church, and it was no incipient Romanism that moved
him. He was completely ignorant of the greater part of that faith, and,
still more, had no idea of the gulf that separates it from all other
religions. He would have supposed, if he had stopped to think, that, as
with other sects, one considered its tenets, made up one's mind as to
their truth or falsehood one by one, and if one believed a sufficient
majority of them joined the Church. It was only, then, the mood of the
moment, and when, he found himself really moving towards that finger-post
he excused himself by thinking that as he was, by his own act, exiled,
from, more familiar temples, he would visit this that would have about it
a suggestion of France.

He wondered if