“Ah, you do want it when you do, guv’nor,” the man said. Then he walked off, lifting his feet a little higher, with a little colour in his cheeks and his back more erect. “Poor devil!” Grimshaw said, half to himself. “Surely,” the priest said beside him in fluting and lofty tones, “are we not all poor devils in the sight of the Ruler of Ages?” Robert Grimshaw minutely bowed his head. “Your dizziness has left you, Father?” he asked. “It is the long fasting. I was on the watch for you to fall.” “You speak Greek,” the priest said, “and are acquainted with the practices of the Church?” It was then just the end of Lent, for Easter fell very late that year. “My mother was a Lascarides and I have many interests in Greece,” Grimshaw answered. “Ah! the Lascarides were very faithful,” the priest said. “It was they in the main who helped us to build the church here.” “The church can’t be much more than a stone’s-throw from here. I was wondering what brought you.” “I am glad you are Greek,” the Father said, “for I think it was a very good charity you did just now, and you spoke to that man like a brother, which is not what the best of these English can do.” “Oh, come!” Grimshaw said, “the English have their virtues.” The priest bowed his head in courtesy. “It is one of their traditions,” Robert Grimshaw said, “to give tobacco instead of pence to beggars. It is less demoralizing.” Again the priest bowed. “Precisely so,” he said. “It is less demoralizing. It gives less pleasure. I imagine that when the English blest spirit descends from heaven once a year to the place of torment, he will bear a drop of water to place upon the sufferer’s tongue. It will be less demoralizing than the drop of healing oil that you and I will bear. Also, it will teach the poor soul to know its place.... Tell me, my son,” he added suddenly, “do we not, you and I, feel lonely in this place?” “Well, it is a very good place,” Robert Grimshaw said. “I think it is the best place in the world.” “_Eemeision_!” the priest said. “I do not say that it is not. And in that is shown the truth of the saying: ‘How evil are the good places of this world!’” “Assuredly you have fasted long, Father,” Grimshaw said. “To a demoralizing degree!” the priest answered ironically. “And let us consider where that leads us. If we have fasted long, we have given ourselves to the angelic hosts. We have given our very substance to these sweet beggars. So we have demoralized the poor of heaven by the alms of our bodies.” “Surely,” Robert Grimshaw said, “if we overburden our bodies with fasting, we demoralize the image of our Creator and Saviour?” “Not so!” the priest thundered suddenly, and his eyes blazed far back in his skull. “We have mortified this our body which is from the devil, and in the lowness of the tides of this life we see the truth. For I tell you that when we see this place to be lonely, then, indeed, we see the truth, and when we say that it is pleasant, we lie foully.”