moralizings upon these two great roads on either side of the Park that ran a parallel course, but never met. How foreign it all seemed on this side with unfamiliar green omnibuses instead of red, with never even a well-known beggar or pavement-artist. The very sky had an alien look, seeming vaster somehow than the circumscribed clouds of Kensington. Perhaps after all the people of this intolerably surprizing city were not so much to be blamed for their behaviour during a period of war. They had nothing to hold them together, to teach them to endure and enjoy, to suffer and rejoice in company. These great main roads sweeping West and East with multitudinous chimney-pots between were symbolic of the whole muddle of existence. “But what do I want?” Michael asked himself so loudly that an errand-boy stayed his whistling and stared after him until he turned the corner. “I don’t know,” he muttered in the face of a fussy little woman, who jumped aside to let him pass. Soon he was deep in one of Mr. Viner’s arm-chairs and, without waiting even to produce one of the attenuated pipes he still affected, exclaimed with desolating conviction: “I’m absolutely sick of everything!” “What, again?” said the priest, smiling. “It’s this war.” “You’re not thinking of enlisting in the Imperial Yeomanry?” “Oh, no, but a friend of mine—Alan Merivale’s uncle—has been killed. It seems all wrong.” “My dear old chap,” said Mr. Viner earnestly, “I’m sorry for you.” “Oh, it isn’t me you’ve got to pity,” Michael cried. “I’d be glad of his death. It’s the finest death a fellow can have. But there’s nothing fine about it, when one sees these gibbering blockheads shouting and yelling about nothing. I don’t know what’s the matter with England.” “Is England any worse than the rest of the world?” asked Mr. Viner. “All this wearing of buttons and khaki ties!” Michael groaned. “But that’s the only way the man in the street can show his devotion. You don’t object to ritualism, do you? You cross yourself and bow down. The church has colours and lights and incense. Do all these dishonour Our Lord’s death?” “That’s different,” said Michael. “And anyway I don’t know that the comparison is much good to me now. I think I’ve lost my faith. I am sorry to shock you, Mr. Viner.” “You don’t shock me at all, my dear boy.” “Don’t I?” said Michael in slightly disappointed tones. “You forget that a priest is more difficult to shock than anyone on earth.” “I like the way you take yourself as a typical priest. Very few of them are like you.” “Come, that’s rather a stupid remark, I think,” said Mr. Viner coldly. “Is it? I’m sorry. It doesn’t seem to worry you very much that I’ve lost my faith,” Michael went on in an aggrieved voice.