These men had sung this "Agnus Dei" as perhaps it never would be sung again, but she knew the boy treble to be incapable of singing this canon properly, so she could hardly resist the impulse to run up to the choir loft and tell her father breathlessly that she would take his place. She smiled at the consternation such an act would occasion. Even if she could get to the choir loft without being noticed, she could not sing this music, her voice was full of sex, and this music required the strange sexless timbre of the voices she had heard in Rome. But the boy sang better than she anticipated; his voice was wanting in strength and firmness; she listened, anxious to help him, perplexed that she could not. The last Gospel was then read, and she followed Ulick out of church. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN On getting outside the church, they were surprised to find that it had been raining. The shower had laid the dust, freshened the air, and upon the sky there was a beautiful flowerlike bloom; the white clouds hung in the blue air unlifting fugitive palace and tower, and when Evelyn and Ulick looked into this mysterious cloudland, their hearts overflowed with an intense joy. She opened her parasol, and told him that her father was lunching with the Jesuits. But he and she were going to dine together at Dowlands; and after dinner they were not to forget to practise the Bach sonata which was in the programme for the evening concert. She thought of the long day before them, and with mixed wonderment and pleasure of how much better they would know each other at the end of the day. She wanted to know how he thought and felt about things; and it seemed to her that he could tell her all that she yearned to know, though what this was she did not know herself. There were strange hills and valleys and fabulous prospects in the great white cloud which hung at the end of the suburban street, and it seemed to her that she would like to wander with him there among the white dells, and to stand with him upon the high pinnacles. She was happy in an infinite cloudland while he told her of her father's struggle to obtain mastery in St. Joseph's. But she experienced a passing pang of regret that she had not been present to witness the first struggles of the reformation.