She pointed to where, just under the cambered oak roof, there ran a dado, on which, carved in white bas-relief, lions, hares, stags, dogs, cats, crocodiles, and birds, formed a singular procession, which was continued round the nave and choir.

“Yes, I like them too,” assented Donnington slowly.  “Though somehow I did feel this afternoon that they were out of place in a church.”

“Oh, how can you say that?” cried the girl.  “I love to think of them here!  I’m sure that at night they leap joyfully down, and skip about the church, praising the Lord.”

“Bubbles!” he exclaimed reprovingly.

“Almost any animal,” she said, with a touch of seriousness, “is nicer, taking it all in all, than almost any human being.”  And then she quoted in the deep throaty voice which was one of her greatest charms: 

  “A robin redbreast in a cage
  Puts all Heaven in a rage.”

“The one I should like to see put over every manger is: 

  “A horse misus’d upon the road
  Calls to Heaven for human blood,”

said Donnington.

“Oh!” she cried, “and Bill, surely the best of all is: 

  “A skylark wounded on the wing,
  A cherubim doth cease to sing.”

Donnington smiled.  “I suppose I’m more practical than you are,” he said.  “If I were a schoolmaster, I’d have inscribed on the walls of every classroom: 

  “Kill not the moth or butterfly,
  For the Last Judgment draweth nigh.”

They worked very hard during the half-hour that followed, though only the finishing touches remained to be done.  Still, it meant moving a ladder about, and stretching one’s arms a good deal, and Bubbles insisted on doing her full share of everything.

“Let’s rest a few minutes,” she said at last, and leading the way up the central aisle, she sat down wearily in one of the carved choir stalls.

Then she lifted her arms, and putting her hands behind her neck, she tipped her head back.

The young man came and sat down in the next stall.  Bubbles was leaning back more comfortably now, her red cap almost off her head.  There was a great look of restfulness on her pale, sensitive face.

She put out her hand and felt for his; after a moment of hesitation he slid down and knelt close to her.

“Bubbles,” he whispered, “my darling—­darling Bubbles.  I wish that here and now you would make up your mind to give up everything—­” He stopped speaking, and bending, kissed her hand.

“Yes,” she said dreamily.  “Give up everything, Bill?  Perhaps I will.  But what do you mean by everything?”

There was a self-pitying note in her low, vibrant voice.  “You know it is given to people, sometimes, to choose between good and evil.  I’m afraid”—­she leant forward, and passed her right hand, with a touch of tenderness most unusual with her, over his upturned face and curly hair—­“I’m afraid, Bill, that, almost without knowing it, I chose evil, ‘Evil, be thou my good.’  Isn’t that what the wicked old Satanists used to say?”