He moved forward a pace or two, and leaned over the rail, looking out and over the gimcrack shore buildings with their staring, blatant, ugly modernity. "It's all very well," he said, "for you to take it lightly, but it happens to be so amazingly true. I'm always seeing things with you." Ursula studied his shoulders in her silent way for a minute or two. Then she got up. "I've to wash for luncheon, Paul," she said, as she moved away, "and don't forget we go ashore afterwards." He half turned. "Shall I take your things?" "Oh, no. Besides, you've got your own. Coming?" "Five minutes," he said. "I haven't been painting, you know." Left alone, he looked away again over the town. In the middle distance, a minaret rose into the hot air. His gaze rested on it, and the train of thought he had had running through his mind more or less consciously all the morning since he had passed beneath its shadow in the street and stared in through the little entrance to the vestibule that was not screened from view, re-occurred to him. It concerned their whole journey. They had come overland to Marseilles, and had stopped twelve hours in Paris as Muriel wanted to do some shopping. Leaving the girls, then, he had gone up to Montmartre with the old ecclesiastical interest still keen in his mind, and thereafter had come down to Notre Dame. And in the two churches, a beginning to the lesson that the voyage seemed to be reading him, had been made. The great modern church, with its flaunting colour and electric light and garish decorations, had been offered first. Herein the religious half of twentieth-century France placated God. At the door, great lists of names, business-like, methodical, were a perpetual prayer for the dead, the sick, specially needy souls, children, neophytes of the priesthood and all the other classes of that Catholic world. Under the blown bubble of the dome, worshippers came and went with eager faith. Without, the great carven figure of the Sacred Heart looked out across the city that this new temple was to save. Beneath, Paris laughed, and shopped, and went about its business in the more hidden streets and houses with French alacrity. Notre Dame seemed to him an already half-deserted backwater. All the pageantry of the Middle Ages--bishop and cardinal, noble and king, peasant and soldier--had flowed in and out again through its great sombre austere doors, here, where massive pillars and narrow windows shut out the sun. The ancient stone effigy of the Mother of God was blackened and a little disreputable. She still had her candles, yes; but official France no more bowed before her, and modern France was trying a new supplication up on the hill. Ten thousand thousand prayers had been prayed here. As many broken hearts had wept here. _Cui bono_? For without, the Seine still slipped lazily by, and over her bridges passed the crowd that laughed and shopped and went about its business.