"A De Profundis ... if you please!" I suppose many people would find the "if you please" either ludicrous or irreverent, or both. At one time I might not have found anything in it myself, beyond a charming rustic _naïveté_. But this afternoon the truth rushed over me in a flood. The souls of the faithful departed are not thirteenth-century souls: they are not the shivering, pitiable ghosts such as engaged the fancy of savage men ten thousand years ago, or the still weaker brains of the Spiritualists of yesterday: they are not mere fictions of the philosopher, invented for convenience of argument. They live and rejoice and sorrow in an intensity of present being. To-night, I believe in the Communion of Saints. They exist as truly as the little black-haired child exists who stopped me outside Bérigny and said "s’il vous plait" when she asked me the time: as truly as Georgette when she says "if you please" and lays the cloth: as truly as Susan when she says "Please, do _please_, Miss," over a letter to Ruddington. This afternoon, I couldn’t say a "De Profundis" for the departed faithful of Bérigny because I’m too much of a heathen to have been taught it. But, before Sunday, I mean to buy a _paroissien_ containing all these things, in French and Latin. When I say my "De Profundis," can it do them any good? I don’t know. Millions of people say it can’t. But more millions of people say it can. And if I make a mistake, I would rather make it in giving than in withholding: just as it is better to say "Yes" to the beggar who may waste your sixpence on beer, than to say "No" to the beggar who may lie down and die for want of bread. _Bedtime_. What an irony! This is the day when there was to be no Ruddington--the day that was to be as rosy as apples and as blithe as a lark. As for Ruddington, I have only just finished re-reading his letter, which Susan has put by way of a hint in my writing-case. As for rosiness and blitheness, I’ve spent my afternoon and evening like Hervey--I wonder if anybody ever read any more of his book than the title?--in Meditations Among the Tombs. My day has been ghost-wan, tomb-silent. No. It has been as full of colour and of sound as could be. But the colours have been the grand and solemn hues of autumn, and the sounds have been majestical as organs and trumpets. To-day I have not been gay. But I have been happy. And I can’t name any day at Sainte Véronique that I repent of less than this. _Saturday morning_. This is the answer I have written for Susan to send by the early post:-- DEAR LORD RUDDINGTON,--I am so sorry that you were anxious about me. But you must not forget the bargain. And the bargain does not allow of long replies "by return." Indeed, in writing this morning, I am breaking my own rule. When this is posted, I shall have received and answered two letters in one week.