"Best way to think, walking at night," he said to himself as he turned down Whitehall, through the all but empty streets, darkened as they were. The meaning of those great familiar spaces struck him as he walked. Hardly formulating it, he became aware of a sense of pride and responsibility as he passed scene after scene of England's past glory. The old Abbey towered up in the moonlight, solemn and still, but almost as if animate and looking at him. He felt small and old as he passed into Victoria Street. There the Stores by night made him smile at the contrast, but in Ashley Gardens Westminster Cathedral made him frown. If he hated anything, it was that for which it stood. Romanism meant to him something effeminate, sneaking, monstrous.... That there should be Englishmen to build such a place positively angered him. He was not exactly a bigot or a fanatic; he would not have repealed the Emancipation Acts; and he would have said that if anyone wanted to be a Romanist, he had better be one. But he would not have had time for anyone who did so want, and if he should have had to have by any chance dealings with a priest, he would have been so frigidly polite that the poor fellow would probably have been frozen solid. Of course, Irishmen were different, and he had known some capital fellows, Irish priests and chaplains.... And then he saw two men ahead of him. They were privates on leave and drunk, but not hopelessly drunk. They were trying to negotiate the blank of the entrance to the Catholic Soldiers' Hut in the protecting wall which guarded the pavement just beyond the cathedral. As Sir Robert came within earshot, one of them stumbled through it and collapsed profanely. He halted for a second irresolutely, with the officer's hesitancy at meddling with a drunken man. The fellow on the ground tried to raise himself, and got one elbow on the gravel. This brought him into such a position that he stared straight at the illuminated crucifix across the path, and but little farther in. "Lor', blimey, Joe," he said, "I'm blasted drunk, I am! Thought I was in old Wipers, I did, and see one of them blessed cru-crushifixes!" The other, rather less away, pulled at his arm. "So yer did, ole pal," he said. "It's there now. This 'ere's some Cartholic place or other. Come _hon_." "Strike me dead, so it is, Joe, large as life! Christ! oo'd 'ave thought it? A bloody cru-cru-chifix! Wat's old England comin' to, Joe?" And with drunken solemnity he began to make a sign of the cross, as he had seen it done in Belgium. The other, in the half-light, plainly started. "Shut your bloody jaw, 'Enery," he said, "It's bad luck to swear near a cruchifix. I saw three chaps blotted out clean next second for it, back behind Lar Basay. Come on, will yer? We carn't stay 'ere all the blasted night."