The little band moved off out of the Court, the loungers' eyes looking curiously at Paul. He stopped again and again to shake hands, and, at the Mission Hall, found the instrument, books, chair, and the rest of the paraphernalia already put away. He said good-bye to one and another. Edith held out her hand.
"Are you alone?" he asked. "May I see you home?"
"I don't like to trouble you," she said.
He smiled at her eagerly. "I believe you know I'm glad of the chance," he replied.
She lived some way off and scarcely in his direction, but young Vintner, who usually escorted her home, saw the arrangement, and surrendered her to Paul without a question. Still he wished Miss Ernest had been there; then, of necessity, the vicar's son saw the curate's daughter home. Under those circumstances, he usually secured Edith, who fell to him likewise, more often than not, on school-treats or C.E. excursions or riding back on summer evenings with the Members' Cycling Club. But there was nothing tangible between them, and he was devoted to Paul like all the rest of their circle. So the two leaders went off together.
They said little at first. Their way lay down a long wide well-lit main street with many people about, if few vehicles seeing that it was Sunday evening. There was a sense of triumph in Paul, a sense growing steadily now that the service was over and other less personal influences laid for awhile aside, and he saw the commonplace street as a vista of magic and wonder. They passed a darkened church, all locked at this late hour, which was little thought of in their circle as lacking in evangelical zeal. At a street corner, under a banner with a text upon it, another open-air service from the local Wesleyan chapel was in progress, and a speaker with a harsh voice was thundering torrential salvation. Paul glanced at the girl by his side with a smile. "'Peace be to all them who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity,'" he quoted quietly.
She nodded. "But the Wesleyans are so noisy," she said, "and I don't see why they need have left the Church."
"We shall right all that," said Paul, utterly unconscious of boasting. "The Evangelicals in all the churches must come together. I don't know why there is any delay. They want someone to make a move. When I'm ordained I shall go and preach in Nonconformist chapels and invite them to my church no matter what the Bishop says. 'We must obey God rather than man.'"
The girl looked up at him. "Why does everything you say ring so unanswerably true?" she demanded with a little smile.
"Does it?"
"Yes. Everyone thinks so. Do you know you frighten me sometimes."
"Frighten you! Why in the world?"
"Because you're irresistible. Do you remember last week's prayer meeting? Maud said to me afterwards: 'He'll make us all foreign missionaries.'"
"I wish I could," said Paul, quite gravely. "Why not?"
"That's just it," she replied. "When you say 'Why not?' there doesn't seem to be any answer. But my father would find one quickly enough."
They turned off into the first of a network of darker side-streets of villas leading to her road. A sedate suburban air brooded there, and except for a wandering couple and a distant policeman, no one else was in sight or hearing. The night was clear and sweet. A little moon was climbing into the sky. Paul and Edith slowed down instinctively.
Paul did not pursue the complication. Mr. Thornton was a photographer in Edward Street, a highly respectable person, a member of his father's church, but not within the circle of his father's actual friends. The mention of him gave Paul a slight jar about Edith. He knew well enough that if he had been seeing Madeline home, his mother would have been highly delighted, but that she would be slightly uneasy at hearing that he had been with Edith. But he was just discovering Edith. He liked Madeline—she was far too pretty, with her fair hair and big eyes and nicely-tempered lady-like admiration, not to be liked. At the last school-treat—oh well, but he hadn't said anything really. And it was in the return train that very day that he had, so to say, discovered Edith. He had found himself in her carriage, having strayed from that reserved for his father and mother to shepherd some late arrivals, and she had been opposite him the whole way. She was quiet—he had noticed that first; but when he did succeed in drawing her out a little, he had found a very attractive creature. It was hard to say why, but still, as he analysed her, she was frank, gay, and yet unexpectedly deep. And she, too, was pretty. He had seen her home from the station, for the first time, and discovered that his mother was just a little annoyed.
"Do you know," he said now, continuing the subject, "I can't make up my mind what I want exactly. There seems such a lot to do in England, and yet of course I'm pledged to be a foreign missionary."
"I see," she said.
"Well, what do you think?" he demanded. "It makes me burn to see the deadness and disunion among Christians at home, and yet the heathen, dying daily without Christ—how can one stay in England for a moment longer than is necessary?"
"God will surely show you what you must do," said the girl quietly.
There was a depth of sincerity in the simple words that struck him. It was the kind of thing Madeline would never have said, and would not have meant if she had. He eyed her with a sudden wish to see more of her. "Do you know I go to Cambridge on Tuesday?" he asked.
She nodded.
"It's going to cut me off from things here," he went on. "I shall have to work in the vacs., you know. And I'm tingling to get there. I'll have time to write a bit, and I expect editors will look at stuff that comes from the 'Varsity."
"I read that bit of yours in The Record," she said.
The implied praise pleased him. "Did you?" he cried. "Did you like it? I'm longing to be able to write as well as preach. I want God to have my pen as well as my tongue."
"Oh you are lucky!" she exclaimed involuntarily.
"Lucky? Why?"
"You've so much to give. I've nothing."
He was extraordinarily touched by her humility. He wanted to take her arm, but he did not like to do so. They turned another corner, and were in her street.
"Don't say that," he said. "You've yourself—give that. No one can give more."
"I'm not sure," she said, with a nervous catch in her voice, "that I can give that."
"Why not?" he asked.
She did not reply directly. "I wonder what you will be like after a term at Cambridge," she said, inconsequently.
"It won't change me at all," said Paul.
The girl made little stabs with her umbrella at the pavement. "It will," she said. "I wonder if you'll come back the least bit the same. Oh, I know! You'll have new friends and new interests, and you'll think us all just a little cheap. You'll go away in the holidays, abroad very likely, and even our country won't seem the same to you."
Paul was surprised at her vehemence, and he came to a sudden resolution. "Do you know," he said, "I'm going to take a last bike ride to-morrow round Hursley Woods and Allington, just to say good-bye. I meant to go alone, but do you think you could come too? I'd love it. We'd be able to talk, up there in the heather. Will you?"
The girl slowed down still more; they were very near her home. She was so glad that he had asked her that she could hardly speak. "Yes," she said; and then, with a burst of confidence: "Do you think we ought to?"
"Why not?" he queried, frowning. "Well, we'll risk it anyway. Look here, let's meet at the bottom of Coster Lane—say at eleven. Shall we? That will give us two hours, lots of time."
She nodded without speaking, and put her hand on the latch.
"You won't be late—Edith," he said, calling her, on the impulse, by her Christian name.
She flushed in the kindly dark. "No," she said softly. How could she? she asked herself as she let herself in.
It was half-past