e!
For now we grope for hands where no hands are,
And, deathless, still we cry,
Nor hope for a reply.

You promised harvest and a perfect yield.
You promised true, for on the harvest morn,
Behold a reaper strode across the field,
And man of woman born
Was gathered in as corn.

You promised honour and ordeal by flame.
You promised true. In joy we trembled lest
We should be found unworthy when it came;
But--oh--we never guessed
The fury of the test.

You promised friends and songs and festivals.
You promised true. Our friends, who still are young,
Assemble for their feasting in those halls
Where speaks no human tongue.
And thus our songs are sung.

I have very rarely found Sunday in London a successful day. I hate
idleness without peace, and festivity without beauty, and noise without
music. I hate to see London people in unnatural clothes. I hate to see a
city holding its breath.

Jay waited ten minutes on the steps of St. Paul's for Mr. Russell. This
was not because he was late, but because she was early; and this again
was not because she was indecently eager, but because she had hit on an
unexpectedly non-stop 'bus. She felt a fool for ten minutes. And when you
have waited ten minutes on those enormous steps under the eye of the
pigeons, you will know why she felt a fool.

Mr. Russell arrived in Christina the motor car, and simultaneously a
shower fell. From the first moment Jay felt unsuccess in the air of that
much-anticipated day. She was introduced to Christina, and said, "But we
can't take that thing into the Cathedral."

"We don't want to," said Mr. Russell, although, as he was a born driver,
the challenge made him instinctively measure with his eye the depth of
the steps, and the width of the doorway, from Christina's point of view.
"We don't want to pray. We want to talk."

Anonyma would have been astonished to hear him say this.

"As a matter of fact," said Jay, "I brought Chloris for the same reason."

Chloris was eating the bread which a kind but short-sighted old lady
believed herself to be giving to the pigeons.

Mr. Russell had hardly been able to imagine his 'bus-conductor in any
dress but that of her calling. Now that he saw her in unambitious
London-coloured things, he was glad to notice that her clothes were not
Sunday clothes, but the sort that you forget about directly you look away
from them.

This was the sort of day that breaks up delusions, and as Christina the
motor car s