They were singing in the Cathedral, and lights glowed redly through the stained windows. Strangely the place transcended all factions, all barriers, proving them illusions in the still light of the Real. Eddy, beneath all his ineffectualities, his futilities of life and thought, had a very keen sense of unity, of the coherence of all beauty and good; in a sense he did really transcend the barriers recognised by less shallow people. With a welcoming leap his heart went out to embrace all beauty, all truth. Surely one could afford to miss no aspect of it through blindness. Open-eyed he looked into the blue night of lamps and shadows and men and women, and beyond it to the stars and the sickle of the moon, and all of it crowded into his vision, and he caught his breath a little and smiled, because it was so good and so much. When he got home he saw his mother sitting in the hall, reading the _Times_. Moved by love and liking, he put his arm round her shoulders and bent over her and kissed her. The grace, the breeding, the culture--she was surely part of it all, and should make, like the Cathedral, for harmony. Arnold had found Mrs. Oliver commonplace. Eddy found her admirable. Jane had not found her at all. There was the difference between them. Undoubtedly Eddy’s, whether the most truthful way or not, was the least wasteful. CHAPTER IX. THE CLUB. Soon after Eddy’s return to London, Eileen Le Moine wrote and asked him to meet her at lunch at a restaurant in Old Compton Street. It was a rather more select restaurant than they and their friends usually frequented in Soho, so Eddy divined that she wanted to speak to him alone and uninterrupted. She arrived late, as always, and pale, and a little abstracted, as if she were tired in mind or body, but her smile flashed out at him, radiant and kind. Direct and to the point, as usual, she began at once, as they began to eat risotto, “I wonder would you do something for Hugh?” Eddy said, “I expect so,” and added, “I hope he’s much better?”