They turned in their walk, and Peter looked out over the old town.  In the glow of sunset the thin iron modern spire of the cathedral had a grace not its own, and the roofs below it showed strong and almost sentient.  One could imagine that the distant cathedral brooding over the city heard, saw, and spoke, if in another language than the language of men.

“If that were all, Langton,” said Peter suddenly, “I’d shoot myself.”

“You’re a queer fellow, Graham,” said Langton.  “I almost think you might.  I’d like to know what becomes of you, anyway.  Forgive me—­I don’t mean to be rude—­but you may make a parson yet.  But don’t found a new religion for Heaven’s sake, and don’t muddle up man-made laws and God-made instincts—­if they are God-made,” he added.

Peter said nothing, until they were waiting at the carriage-door for Jenks.  Then he said:  “Then you think out here men have simply abandoned conventions, and because there is no authority or fear or faith left to them, they do as they please?”

Langton settled himself in a corner.  “Yes,” he said, “that’s right in a way.  But that’s negatively.  I’d go farther than that.  Of course, there are a lot of Judas Iscariots about for whom I shouldn’t imagine the devil himself has much time, though I suppose we ought not to judge ’em, but there are also a lot of fine fellows—­and fine women.  They are men and women, if I understand it, who have sloughed off the conventions, that are conventions simply for convention’s sake, and who are reaching out towards the realities.  Most of them haven’t an idea what those are, but dumbly they know.  Tommy knows, for instance, who is a good chum and who isn’t; that is, he knows that sincerity and unselfishness and pluck are realities.  He doesn’t care a damn if a chap drinks and swears and commits what the Statute-Book and the Prayer-Book call fornication.  And he certainly doesn’t think there is an ascending scale of sins, or at any rate that you parsons have got the scale right.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised if we haven’t,” said Peter.  “The Bible lumps liars and drunkards and murderers and adulterers and dogs—­whatever that may mean—­into hell altogether.”

“That’s so,” said Langton, sticking a candle on the window-sill; “but I reckon that’s not so much because they lie or drink or murder or lust or—­or grin about the city like our friend Jenks, who’ll likely miss the boat for that very reason, but because of something else they all have in common.”

“What’s that?” demanded Peter.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” said Langton.

At this moment the French guard, an R.T.O., and Jenks appeared in sight simultaneously, the two former urging the latter along.  He caught sight of them, and waved.

“Help him in,” said the R.T.O., a jovial-looking subaltern, genially—­“and keep him there,” he added under his voice.  “He’s had all he can carry, and if he gets loose again he’ll be for the high jump.  The wonder is he ever got back in time.”