If he had been madder, if he'd been more set on it, he would have gone off with her that minute; he would have persuaded her to give up church; he himself would have broken his promise to old Wauchope. But he did none of these things, and his abstention was the sign and measure of his coolness, of his sanity. He only said, as any cool and sane young man might say: How about after church? And if he called when he got back from Clapham? He wouldn't be a minute later than half past nine. And Violet had said: Oh, well--she didn't know about calling. You see, she only had one room. And he had reckoned with that difficulty; for Winny Dymond only had one room which she shared with Maudie. By calling, he'd meant, of course, on the doorstep, to take her for a walk. But Violet, for some reason, didn't care about the doorstep. She'd rather, if he didn't mind, that he met her somewhere out of doors. And so they had been drawn into an assignation at the old elm tree by the Causeway on Wandsworth Plain. Thus, if it had done nothing else to him, the Service for Men could be held responsible for throwing that meeting with Violet much too late. Still, he had no misgivings. It was June; and in June nine o'clock was still daytime. And when he went to the Service he hadn't any idea what it would do to him. No more, of course, had poor old Wauchope. Wauchope was grateful and apologetic; before they got there he said he didn't know what he might be letting Ransome in for. The curate johnnie was bossing the Service, but he understood they'd engaged another joker for the Address. What he, Wauchope, funked, personally, more than anything was the Address. And Ransome, generously, declared that whatever it was like, he'd stick it. He'd stand by Wauchope to the finish, like a man. * * * * * They left their bicycles in Wauchope's rooms, and walked the few hundred yards to St. Matthias's Mission Church. St. Matthias's Mission Church was a brand-new yellow-brick building in the latest Gothic, with a red-tiled roof, where a shrill little bell swung tinkling under the arch in the high west gable. Inside, cream distempered walls with brown stencilings; in the roof, bare beams of pitch pine, stained and varnished; north and south, clear glass windows shedding a greenish light; one brilliant stained-glass window above the altar at the east end.