'clock he could bear it no longer. The
house was quiet, and the lights for the most part gone out. He
took his hat and thin cloak, throwing this round him so as to
hide the purple at his throat, went softly down the corridors and
stairs, and let himself out noiselessly into Ambrosden Avenue. He
felt he must have air and space: he was beginning almost to hate
this silent, well-ordered ecclesiastical house, where wheels ran
so smoothly, so inexorably, and so effectively.

He came out presently into Victoria Street and turned westwards.

He did not notice much as he went. Only his most superficial
faculties paid attention to the great quiet lighted thoroughfare,
to the few figures that moved along, to the scattered sentinels
of the City of Westminster police in their blue and silver, who
here and there stood at the corners of the cross-streets, who
saluted him as he went by; to the little lighted shrines that
here and there hung at the angles. Certainly it was a Catholic
city, he perceived in his bitterness, drilled and disciplined by
its religion; there was no noise, no glare, no apparent evil. And
the marvel was that the people seemed to love to have it so! He
remembered questioning a friend or two soon after his return to
England as to the revival of these Curfew laws, and the
xtraordinary vigilance over morals; and the answer he had
received to the effect that those things were taken now as a
matter of course. One priest had told him that civilization in
the modern sense would be inconceivable without them. How else
could the few rule the many? . . .

He came down, across Parliament Square, to the river at last,
walking swiftly and purposelessly. A high gateway, with a
guard-room on either side, spanned the entrance to the wide
bridge that sprang across to Southwark, and an officer stepped
out as he approached, saluted, and waited.

He drove down his impatience with an effort, remembering the
_espionage_ (as he called it) practised after nightfall.

"I want to breathe and look at the river," he said sharply.

The officer paused an instant.

"Very good, father," he said.

Ah, this was better! . . . The bridge, empty from end to end, so
far as he could see, ran straight over to the south side, where,
once again, there rose up the guard-house. He turned sharply when
he saw it, and leaned on the parapet looking eastwards.

The eternal river flowed beneath him, clean and steady and
strong, between the high emba