And now, in this new England, the church, empty of the Divine Presence, was emptying, too, of its human visitors.  She could hear great doors somewhere crash together, and the reverberation roll beneath the stone vaulting.  It would empty soon, desolate and dark; and so it would be all night....  Why did not the very stones cry out?

Mistress Alice touched her on the arm.

“We must be going,” she said.  “They are closing the church.”

IV

She had a long talk with Robin on Christmas night.

The day had passed, making strange impressions on her, which she could not understand.  Partly it was the contrast between the homely associations of the Feast, begun, as it was for her, with the mass before dawn—­the room at the top of the widow’s house was crowded all the while she was there—­between these associations and the unfamiliarity of the place.  She had felt curiously apart from all that she saw that day in the streets—­the patrolling groups, the singers, the monstrous-headed mummers (of whom companies went about all day), two or three glimpses of important City festivities, the garlands that decorated many of the houses.  It seemed to her as a shadow-show without sense or meaning, since the heart of Christmas was gone.  Partly, too, no doubt, it was the memory of a former Christmas, three years ago, when she had begun to understand that Robin loved her.  And he was with her again; yet all that he had stood for, to her, was gone, and another significance had taken its place.  He was nearer to her heart, in one manner, though utterly removed, in another.  It was as when a friend was dead:  his familiar presence is gone; but now that one physical barrier is vanished, his presence is there, closer than ever, though in another fashion....

* * * * *

Robin had come in to sup.  Captain Fortescue would fetch him about nine o’clock, and the two were to ride for the coast before dawn.

The four sat quiet after supper, speaking in subdued voices, of hopes for the future, when England should be besieged, indeed, by the spiritual forces that were gathering overseas; but they slipped gradually into talk of the past and of Derbyshire, and of rides they remembered.  Then, after a while, Anthony was called away; Mistress Alice moved back to the table to see her needlework the better, and Robin and Marjorie sat together by the fire.

* * * * *

He told her again of the journey from Rheims, of the inns where they lodged, of the extraordinary care that was taken, even in that Catholic land, that no rumour of the nature of the party should slip out, lest some gossip precede them or even follow them to the coast of England.  They carried themselves even there, he said, as ordinary gentlemen travelling together; two of them were supposed to be lawyers; he himself passed as Mr. Ballard’s servant.  They heard mass when they could in the larger towns, but even then not all together.