The cathedral had laid its spell upon her. She felt it like a quiet hand upon her heart. By its actual religious significance, in a narrow sense at least, she was not affected. But in so far as it stood for something detached from the fever and the fret of human existence, it began to assume a great meaning. For the first time in her life she longed for a serenity which should lift her above the storms of passion; for interests independent of the love of man. It was characteristic of Cecily, that, desiring a thing strongly, she should definitely try to gain it. What was the first step for her, individually, towards spiritual freedom? Surely to create. It was the craving of her whole nature. She longed for freedom; so only could she be free. Then and there she began to think out and plan in detail an idea which long ago she had been too happy, and lately too wretched, to translate into writing. The mosaic of sunshine faded from the walls, the great church grew dim while she sat, still thinking. When at last she rose, and, a little dazed, stepped from the twilight of the nave into the street, the sun had sunk below the opposite houses, and the saffron-colored sky told of evening. Cecily put back her head, and with her eyes followed the soaring campanile till they rested on the cross which at its summit pierced the quiet sky. With no sense of incongruity, but with a curious feeling of gratitude, she reflected upon the nature of her meditation within the building to which that tower belonged. A few moments later she reached her own doorstep, and that same evening she began to write. CHAPTER XII “My dear!” said Lady Wilmot, as her motor-car stopped in Dover Street before her club. “Who’d have thought of seeing you?” The man opened the door, and she descended with a rustle of silks to shake hands with Rose Summers, who was passing. “What are you doing away from your country cottage? I thought you never left off holding your children’s hands for a minute. Come in and have some tea,” she exclaimed in one breath. Rose hesitated. “I succumb to tea,” she said, after a second’s pause, “though I’ve enough shopping to do to last a week.” They entered the club, and Lady Wilmot bore down upon the tea-room like a ship in full sail, Rose following in her wake with an expression of anticipated amusement. It was to the prospect of gossip she had succumbed, rather than to the offer of tea, with the prescience that to one who had fallen a little behind the times, half an hour with Lady Wilmot would be a godsend. “I shall learn more than I could pick up in three months, otherwise,” was her smiling reflection as she settled herself opposite her hostess at one of the tables of colored marble, in the embrasure of a window.