“She’s getting to think it doesn’t matter,” James complained; “Church, and all that. I know she’s given up things she used to do. And really, the more she’s surrounded by influences such as Mrs. Le Moine’s, the more she needs the Church to pull her through, if only she’d see it. Mrs. Le Moine’s a wonderful musician, I suppose, but she has queer ideas, rather; I shouldn’t trust her. She and Hugh Datcherd--the editor of _Further_, you know--are hand and glove. And considering he has a wife and she a husband ... well, it seems pretty futile, doesn’t it?” “Does it?” Eddy wondered. “It depends so much on the special circumstances. If the husband and the wife don’t mind----” “Rot,” said James. “And the husband ought to mind, and I don’t know that the wife doesn’t. And, anyhow, it doesn’t affect the question of right and wrong.” That was too difficult a proposition for Eddy to consider; he gave it up. “I’m going to the Blackfriars Road flat with Denison one day, I believe,” he said. “I shall be one of the Fabians that sit on the bed that doesn’t look like a sofa.” James sighed. “I wish, if you get to know Sally at all, you’d encourage her to come down here more, and try to put a few sound ideas into her head. She’s taking to scorning my words of wisdom. I believe she’s taken against parsons.... Oh, you’re going with Denison.” “Arnold won’t do anyone any harm,” Eddy reassured him. “He’s so extraordinarily innocent. About the most innocent person I know. We should shock him frightfully down here if he saw much of us; he’d think us indecent and coarse. Hillier and I did shock him rather, by liking “The Penitent.” “I wonder if you like everything,” grumbled Peters. “Most things, I expect,” said Eddy. “Well, most things are rather nice, don’t you think?” “I suppose you’ll like the Le Moines and Miss Dawn if you get to know them. And all the rest of that crew.” Eddy certainly expected to do so. Six o’clock struck, and Peters went to church to hear confessions, and Eddy to the Institute to play billiards with the Church Lads’ Brigade, of which he was an officer. A wonderful life of varied active service, this Southwark life seemed to Eddy; full and splendid, and gloriously single-eyed. Arnold, in sneering at it, showed himself a narrow prig. More and more it was becoming clear to Eddy that nothing should be sneered at and nothing condemned, not the Catholic Church, nor the Salvation Army, nor the views of artists, Fabians, and Le Moines, without collars and without morals. CHAPTER III. PLEASANCE COURT. One evening Arnold took Eddy to supper with his cousin Jane Dawn and James Peters’ cousin Sally. They lived in Pleasance Court, a small square with a garden. After supper they were all going to a first performance of a play by Cecil Le Moine, called “Squibs.”