Peter, sitting by the door, sank into a great peace.  Half-way up the church he saw Rhoda sitting very still.  She too was looking up the church towards the lamps and the altar beyond them.

Presently a cassocked sacristan came and lit the vesper lights, for evensong was to be at seven, and the altar blazed out, an unearthly brilliance in the dim place.  The low murmur of voices (a patient priest had been hearing confessions for an hour) ceased, and people began coming in one by one for service.  Rhoda shivered a little, and got up and came down the church.  Peter joined her at the door, and they passed shivering into the fog together.

“I was looking for you,” said Peter, when they were out in the alley that led to the church door.

“It’s time we went, isn’t it,” she said apathetically.

Then she added, inconsequently, “The church seems the only place where one can find a bit of peace.  I can’t think why, when probably it’s all a fairy-tale.”

“I suppose that’s why,” said Peter.  “Fairyland is the most peaceful country there is.”

“You can’t get peace out of what’s not true,” Rhoda insisted querulously.

“Oh, I don’t know....  Besides, fairy-tales aren’t necessarily untrue, do you think?  I don’t mean that, when I call what churches teach a fairy-tale.  I mean it’s beautiful and romantic and full of light and colour and wonderful things happening.  And it’s probably the truer for that.”

“D’you believe it all?” queried Rhoda; but he couldn’t answer her as to that.

“I don’t know.  I never do know exactly what I believe.  I can’t think how anyone does.  But yes, I think I like to believe in those things; they’re too beautiful not to be true.”

“It’s the ugly things that are true,” she said, coughing in the fog.

“Why, yes, the ugly things and the beautiful; God and the devil, if one puts it like that.  Oh, yes, I believe very much in the devil; I can’t believe that any street of houses could look quite like this without the help of someone utterly given over to evil thinking. We aren’t, you see; none of us are ugly enough in our minds to have thought out some of the things one sees; so there must be a devil.”

Rhoda was silent.  He thought she was crying.  He said gently, “I say, would you like to come out to-night, or would you rather be quiet at home?” It would be safe to return home by half-past seven, he thought.

She said, in a small muffled voice, that she didn’t care.

A tall figure passed by them in the narrow alley, looming through the fog.  Rhoda started, and shrank back against the brick wall, clutching Peter’s arm.  The next moment the figure passed into the circle of light thrown down by a high lamp that glimmered over a Robbia-esque plaque shrine let into the wall, and they saw that it was a cassocked priest from the clergy-house going into church.  Rhoda let out her breath faintly in a sigh, and her fingers fell from Peter’s coat-sleeve.