‘Two coffees and two benedictines,’ cried Frank, and they relapsed into their chairs.  But a half-hour passed and the grey cloud was thicker and the rain more heavy.  The cheerless leaden river flowed slowly under drifting skies.  Beyond an expanse of shining pavement the great black Abbey towered amidst the storm.

‘Have you ever done the Abbey, Maude?’

‘No, Frank; I should love to.’

’I have only been once—­more shame to me to say so!  Is it not a sin that we young Englishmen should be familiar with every music-hall in London and should know so little of this which is the centre of the British race, the most august and tremendous monument that ever a nation owned.  Six hundred years ago the English looked upon it as their holiest and most national shrine, and since then our kings and our warriors and our thinkers and our poets have all been laid there, until there is such an accumulation that the huge Abbey has hardly space for another monument.  Let us spend an hour inside it.’

They made for Solomon’s porch, since it was the nearest and they had but the one umbrella.  Under its shelter they brushed themselves dry before they entered.

‘Whom does the Abbey belong to, Frank?’

‘To you and me!’

‘Now you are joking!’

’Not at all.  It belongs in the long-run to the British taxpayer.  You have heard the story of the Scotch visitor who came on board one of our battleships and asked to see the captain.  “Who shall I say?” said the sentry.  “One of the proprietors,” said the Scotchman.  That’s our position towards the Abbey.  Let us inspect our property.’

They were smiling as they entered, but the smile faded from their lips as the door closed behind them.  In this holy of holies, this inner sanctuary of the race, there was a sense of serene and dignified solemnity which would have imposed itself upon the most thoughtless.  Frank and Maude stood in mute reverence.  The high arches shot up in long rows upon either side of them, straight and slim as beautiful trees, until they curved off far up near the clerestory and joined their sister curves to form the lightest, most delicate tracery of stone.  In front of them a great rose-window of stained glass, splendid with rich purples and crimsons, shone through a subdued and reverent gloom.  Here and there in the aisles a few spectators moved among the shadows, but all round along the walls two and three deep were ranged the illustrious dead, the perishable body within, the lasting marble without, and the more lasting name beneath.  It was very silent in the home of the great dead—­only a distant footfall or a subdued murmur here and there.  Maude knelt down and sank her face in her hands.  Frank prayed also with that prayer which is a feeling rather than an utterance.