"Perhaps more," he added flamboyantly, "and everything is going to be good, because I shall choose it. It’s become a sort of religion with me. A fine thing like that K’ang He jar of mine makes me feel good. I can kneel down before it." Mrs. Biddlecombe observed majestically: "Don’t be blasphemous, Joseph!" "Blasphemous?" he repeated derisively. "It’s blasphemy to my notion to prefer ugliness to beauty. Suppose I’d done as father wanted me to do, and got engaged to that ugly laughin’ hyena, Arabella Pinker, because she had something in her stocking besides a leg like a bed-post." "Now you are indelicate, isn’t he, Susan?" "I chose Susan instead of Bella. Blasphemous! Now, tell me, what do you go to the Cathedral for?" "To worship my Maker." "Well, I’m going to be honest with you and Sue. I go to the Cathedral to look at the roof, the finest bit of stonework in the kingdom. My thoughts just soar up into that vaulting. I feel like a bird o’ Paradise. Our Cathedral is God’s House, and no mistake. My mind can’t grapple with Him, but it gets to close grips with that fan vaulting, which He must have designed." "Never heard you talk like this before," murmured Susan. In her heart, which was beating faster than usual, Miss Biddlecombe was profoundly impressed, because she had wit enough to perceive that her Joe was absolutely sincere. But she trembled at his audacity, because she had been trained to say "Gawd" rather than "God," believing devoutly that the lengthening of the vowel indicated piety. "I’ve had to bottle up things," said Quinney grimly. "Now I’m free to speak my mind, and you’re free too, my girl. Hooray, for plain speech! Lawsy, how it hurts a poor devil to hold his tongue!" Mrs. Biddlecombe retired from the parlour feeling quite unable to deal faithfully with a young man who must be, so she decided, slightly under the influence of liquor. Her ideas had been put to headlong flight, but they returned like homing doves to the great and joyous fact that her prospective son-in-law possessed ten thousand pounds. Enough to intoxicate anybody—that! Her own steady head swam at the luck of things. Later, when the first exuberance had passed, Susan and she would have a word or two to say. For the moment there were ten thousand reasons, all of them pure gold, in favour of discreet silence. *V* To Susan alone, under a pledge of secrecy, Quinney became alluringly expansive. Once, in her flapper days, she had seen Lord George Sanger’s famous three-ring circus, and had tried to take in and assimilate three simultaneous shows. Result—a headache! Peering into Quinney’s mind was quite as exciting as the three-ring circus, and nearly as confusing. He could soar to the giddy pinnacles of Melchester Cathedral, and thence, with a swallow’s flight, wing his way through the open windows of a stately pile of buildings designed by Inigo Jones for the fourth Marquess of Mel.