"Yes," he replied.
"Why?"
"Does it tell you nothing concerning yourself?"
I was positively startled by the question. It seemed incredible that he could have foreseen the effect which it would produce on me.
"What do you mean?" I exclaimed.
He gave an easy laugh, and pointed across my shoulder.
"There is a church," said he, "and moult and moult people entering it. Let us go in too."
I looked at him in increased surprise, for I had not believed him very prone to religious exercises. However, he crossed the road, with me at his heels, and went up the steps in the throng.
The church was dim, and because I came into it out of the April sunshine, it struck upon my senses as dank besides.
The voices of the choir beat upwards through an air blue and heavy with incense; the tapers burning on the altar at the far end of the nave over against us shone blurred and vague as though down some misty tunnel; and from the painted windows on the right the sunshine streamed in slanting rods of light, vari-coloured, disparting the mist.