But after dinner, and a cigar burned frugally in the great rotunda, where the faces of all the comers and goers were unfamiliar, the homesickness of the returned exile came upon him, and he went out to grapple with it in the open air. Faring absently from street to street, with his hands thrust into his overcoat pockets and memory plowing its furrow deep in a field which had lain fallow through many toil-filled weeks, he presently found himself drifting by squares and street-crossings toward Capitol Hill, and out and beyond to a broad avenue and past a house with a veranda in front and a deep-bayed window at the side. There were lights in the house, and an air of owner's occupancy about the place; and on the veranda a big man was tramping solidly up and down, with the red spark at the end of his cigar appearing and disappearing as he passed and repassed the windows. Jeffard saw the man and saw him not. The memory-plow had gone deeper, and the winter night changed places with a June morning, with the sun shining aslant on the wide veranda, and a young woman in a belted house-gown with loose sleeves tiptoeing on the arm of a clumsy chair while she caught up the new growth of a climbing rose. Just here the plow began to tear up rootlets well-buried but still sensitive; and Jeffard turned about abruptly and set his face cityward. But once again in the region of tall buildings and peopled sidewalks, the thought of the crowded lobby and the loneliness of it assailed him afresh, and he changed his course again, being careful to go at right angles to the broad avenue with its house of recollection. A little way beyond the peopled walks the church bells began to ring out clear and melodious on the frosty air, and he remembered what the uncalendared journey had made him forget; that it was Sunday. Pacing thoughtfully, with the transit-hum of the city behind him and the quiet house-streets ahead, and the plow still shearing the sod of the fallow field, he wondered if Constance Elliott would be among the churchgoers. It was an upflash of the old cynicism which prompted the retort that it was improbable; that the Christianity for which she stood was not found in the churches. But the Puritan blood in him rose up in protest at that, and in the rebound the open doors of a church on the opposite side of the way beckoned him. He crossed the street and entered. The organist was playing the voluntary, and a smart young man with a tuberose in his buttonhole held up the finger of invitation. "Not too far forward," Jeffard whispered; but the young man seemed not to have heard, since he led the way up the broad centre aisle to a pew far beyond the strangers' precinct.