ham. As he took it, Peter noticed the
man opposite. His badge was a Maltese Cross, but he wore a flannel collar
and tie. Their eyes met, but the other stared a bit stonily. For the
second time, Peter wished he hadn't a clerical collar. The next he was
taking the glass from the South African. "Cheerio," said Donovan.

"Here's to you," said Peter, and leaned back with an assumption of ease.

He had a strange sense of unreality. No fool and no Puritan, he had
naturally, however, been little in such an atmosphere since ordination.
He would have had a drink in Park Lane with the utmost ease, and he would
have argued, over it, that the clergy were not nearly so out of touch
with men as the papers said. But down here, in the steamer's saloon,
surrounded by officers, in an atmosphere of indifference to him and his
office, he felt differently. He was aware, dimly, that for the past five
years situations in which he had been had been dominated by him, and that
he, as a clergyman, had been continually the centre of concern. Talk,
conduct, and company had been rearranged when he came in, and it had
happened so often that he had ceased to be aware of it. But now he was
a mere unit, of no particular importance whatever. No one dreamed of
modifying himself particularly because a clergyman was present. Peter
clung to the belief that it was not altogether so, but he was
sufficiently conscious of it. And he was conscious of liking it, of
wanting to sink back in it as a man sinks back in an easy-chair. He
felt he ought not to do so, and he made a kind of mental effort to
pull himself together.

Up on the deck the world was very fair. The French coast was now clearly
visible, and even the houses of the town, huddled together as it seemed,
but dominated by a church on the hill. Behind them, a sister ship
containing Tommies ploughed steadily along, serene and graceful in the
sunlight, and above an airship of silvery aluminum, bearing the
tricoloured circle of the Allies, kept pace with the swift ship without
an effort. Four destroyers were visible, their low, dark shapes ploughing
regularly along at stated intervals, and someone said a fifth was out of
sight behind. People were already beginning to take off their life-belts,
and the sailors were clearing a place for the gangway. Peter found that
Donovan had known what he was about, for his party would be close to the
gangway without moving. He began to wonder uneasily what would be done
on