In the sunshine of the next day Michael almost wondered whether like someone in The Ingoldsby Legends he had ridden with witches on a broomstick. All the cool security of boyhood had left him; he was in a turmoil of desire for an astounding experience. He almost asked himself what he wanted so dearly; and, as he pondered, out of the past in a vision came the picture of himself staring at the boy who walked beside the incense with a silver boat. What did the Lay of St. Alois say? _This with his chasuble, this with his rosary,_ _This with his incense-pot holding his nose awry._ Michael felt a craving to go somewhere and smell that powerful odour again. He remembered how the boy had put out his tongue and he envied him such familiarity with pomps and glories. “Are there any High Churches in Bournemouth?” he asked Mrs. Rewins. “Very high. Incense and all that, you know.” Mrs. Rewins informed him there was one church so high that some said it was practically ‘Roming Catholic.’ “Where is it?” asked Michael, choking with excitement. Yet he had never before wanted to go to church. In the days of Nurse he had hated it. In the days of Miss Carthew he had only found it endurable if his friends were present. He had loathed the rustle of many women dressed in their best clothes. He had hated the throaty voices of smooth-faced clergymen. He had despised the sleek choir-boys smelling of yellow soap. Religion had been compounded of Collects, Greek Testament, Offertory Bags, varnish, qualms for the safety of one’s top-hat, the pleasure of an extra large hassock, ambition to be grown up and bend over instead of kneeling down, the podgy feel of a Prayer Book, and a profound disapproval that only Eton and Winchester among public schools were mentioned in its diaphanous fumbling pages. Now religion should be an adventure. The feeling that he was embarking upon the unknown made Michael particularly reticent, and he was afraid to tell his mother that on Sunday morning he proposed to attend the service at St. Bartholomew’s, lest she might suggest coming also. He did not want to be irritated by Stella’s affectations and conceit, nor did he wish to notice various women turning round to study his mother’s hat. In the end Michael did not go on Sunday to the church of his intention, because at the last moment he could not brace himself to mumble an excuse.