Ronder, moved as always by beauty, smiled as though in answer to the dead Bishop. "Why! you're the most alive thing in this Cathedral," he thought to himself. "Pretty good bit of work, isn't it?" he heard at his elbow. He turned and saw Davray, the painter. The man had been pointed out to him in the street; he knew his reputation. He was inclined to be interested in the man, in any one who had a wider, broader view of life than the citizens of the town. Davray had not been drinking for several weeks; and always towards the end of one of his sober bouts he was gentle, melancholy, the true artist in him rising for one last view of the beauty that there was in the world before the inevitable submerging. He had, on this occasion, been sober for a longer period than usual; he felt weak and faint, as though he had been without food, and his favourite vice, that had been approaching closer and closer to him during these last days, now leered at him, leaning towards him from the other side of the gilded scrolls of the tomb. "Yes, it's a very fine thing." He cleared his throat. "You're Canon Ronder, are you not?" "Yes, I am." "My name's Davray. You probably heard of me as a drunkard who hangs about the town doing no good. I'm quite sure you don't want to speak to me or know me, but in here, where it's so quiet and so beautiful, one may know people whom it wouldn't be nice to know outside." Ronder looked at him. The man's face, worn now and pinched and sharp, must once have had its fineness. "You do yourself an injustice, Mr. Davray," Ronder said. "I'm very glad indeed to know you." "Well, of course, you parsons have got to know everybody, haven't you? And the sinners especially. That's your job. But I'm not a sinner to-day. I haven't drunk anything for weeks, although don't congratulate me, because I'm certainly not going to hold out much longer. There's no hope of redeeming me, Canon Ronder, even if you have time for the job." Ronder smiled. "I'm not going to preach to you," he said, "you needn't be afraid." "Well, let's forget all that. This Cathedral is the very place, if you clergymen had any sense of proportion, where you should be ashamed to preach. It laughs at you." "At any rate the Bishop does," said Ronder, looking down at the tomb. "No, but all of it," said Davray. Instinctively they both looked up. High above them, in the very heart of the great Cathedral tower, a mist, reflected above the windows until it was coloured a very faint rose, trembled like a sea about the black rafters and rounded pillars. Even as they looked some bird flew twittering from corner to corner.