Boreham was nearly late, he stumbled into the ante-chapel just as they were closing the doors with solemn insistence. He uncovered his head as he entered, and his nostrils were struck with a peculiar odour of stone and mortar; a sense of space around him and height above him; also with the warmth of some indefinable sense of community of purpose that annoyed him. He was, indeed, already warm enough physically with his haste in coming; he was also spiritually in a glow with the consciousness of his own magnanimity and toleration. Here was the enlightened Boreham entering a temple where they repeated "Creeds outworn." Here he was entering it without any exhibition of violent hostility or even of contempt. He was entering it decorously, though not without some speed. He was warm and did not wish to be made warmer. What he had not anticipated, and what disappointed him, was that from the ante-chapel he could not see whether the Dashwoods were in the Chapel or not. The screen and organ loft were in the way, they blocked his vision, and not having any "permit" for the Chapel, he had to remain in the ante-chapel, and just hope for the best. He seated himself as near to the door as he could, on the end of the back bench, already crowded. There he disposed of his hat and prepared himself to go through with the service. Boreham did not, of course, follow the prayers or make any responses; he merely uttered a humming noise with the object of showing his mental aloofness, and yet impressing the fact of his presence on the devout around him. Many a man who has a conscientious objection to prayer, likes to hear himself sing. But Boreham's singing voice was not altogether under his own control. It was as if the machinery that produced song was mislaid somewhere down among his digestive organs and had got rusted, parts of it being actually impaired. It had been, in his younger days, a source of regret to Boreham that he could never hope to charm the world by song as well as by words. As he grew older that regret faded, and was now negligible. Is there any religious service in the world more perfect than evensong at Magdalen? Just now, in the twilight of the ante-chapel, a twilight faintly lit above at the spring of the groined roof, the voices of the choir rose and fell in absolute unison, with a thrill of subdued complaint; a complaint uttered by a Hebrew poet dead and gone these many years, a complaint to the God of his fathers, the only true God. Boreham marked time (slightly out of time) muttering-- "Tum/tum tum/ti: Tum/tum tum/tum ti/tum?" loud enough to escape the humiliation of being confounded with those weak-minded strangers who are carried away (in spite of their reason) by the charm of sacerdotal blandishments.