“Why, when one’s friends come to see one,” he said, “one makes the room tidy. If you came to see me at Cambridge, Lady Sunningdale, I should take down my pipe-rack and put it in my bedroom, I should sweep my hearth, I should give you a clean tablecloth for lunch, I should get flowers for the table, I should practise something which I thought you would like to hear me play. I should, in my small way, put all the beauty at my disposal at yours, and put the ugliness away. But--but take Chartries church. How beastly!” Martin paused a moment. Frank was observing him quietly from underneath his hand, for the afternoon sun was pouring its light from the window where Martin had pulled up the blind full into his eyes. The boy seemed to him at this moment suddenly to have grown up, become vivider, to have thought for himself. Crude, elementary, unconvincing it all might be, but it was original. And Martin’s next words endorsed his opinion. Certainly he was not a child any longer. “How dare they? How dare they?” he cried. “A wheezy organ; awful wood-work; terrible windows. Is there anything more hideous in all England than Chartries church,--unless it be a county jail for the confinement of prisoners? Because it is for God, will anything do?” There certainly was crudity here. Frank felt that, though Lady Sunningdale did not, for her indifference on religious matters was perhaps the profoundest thing about her. He had enquired and rejected, she had never even looked in that direction. Martin had enquired, too, and found an awful Presence. And he was ashamed to call in old clothes, so to speak. What was at the service of God was his best. All that was not best was an insult. And his face flushed suddenly. “Why, if that church was my room, and you came to see me, I would cover up the stained glass,” he said. “I would make it decent. I would, I would----“ He paused for a moment, then found the word. “I would have ‘form,’” he said. “I would give you politeness. I would not say, ‘She knows me; she will understand,’ and sit with you in a back bedroom, slops about, tooth-brushes, anything. But because God understands, are we to say ‘Anything will do?’ Why, when the Queen came to Chartries we had four courses for lunch and a red carpet.” He broke off suddenly. “Do you understand what I mean?” he demanded of Frank.