As she began on her solid slice of bread and butter St. Pancras bells stopped again. In the stillness she could hear the sound of her own munching. She stared at the surface of the table that held her plate and cup. It was like sitting up to the nursery table. "How frightfully happy I am," she thought with bent head. Happiness streamed along her arms and from her head. St. Pancras bells began playing a hymn tune in single firm beats with intervals between that left each note standing for a moment gently in the air. The first two lines were playing carefully through to the distant accompaniment of the rapid weaving and interweaving in a regular unbroken pattern of the five soft low contralto bells. The third line of the hymn ran through Miriam's head a ding-dong to and fro from tone to semitone. The bells played it out, without the semitone, with a perfect satisfying falsity. Miriam sat hunched against the table listening for the ascending stages of the last line. The bells climbed gently up, made a faint flat dab at the last top note, left it in the air askew above the decorous little tune and rushed away down their scale as if to cover the impropriety. They clamoured recklessly mingling with Miriam's shout of joy as they banged against the wooden walls of the window space. CHAPTER II 1 "Been to church?" said Gerald digging his shoulders into his chair. "No. Have you?" "We've not been for weeks.... Everybody thinks us awful heathens." "P'raps you are." "It's Curls. She says she's hanged if she's going any more." "I can't stand the vicar" said Harriett. "He doesn't believe a word he says." Fancy Harriett!... "Besides, what's the good?" "Oh, there you are." "There's nothing the matter with church once in a way to my way of thinking if it's a decent high musical service." "Even Eve hardly ever goes now--and nobody could possibly be more goody than she is." This was disquieting. It was one thing to be the agnostic of the family--but Eve and Harriett. Miriam pondered resentfully while Gerald smoked and flicked his clothing and Harriett sat upright and pursed and untroubled in her great chair. She wondered whether she ought to say something about Unitarianism. But after all there might not be anything in it and they might not feel the relief of the way it cleared up the trouble about Christ. Besides there was no worry here in the room. A discussion would lead nowhere. They could all three look at each other if they wanted to and laugh everything off. In the middle of a sleepy Sunday afternoon with nothing to do sitting in three huge chairs and looking at each other they were all right. Harriett's strength and scorn were directed against everything in the world but not against herself ... never against herself. Harriett often thought her grumpy and ill-tempered, but she approved of her. She was approving now.