“Yes, I know,” said Michael. “But at the Abbey I met some people who were supposed to be religious, and they were pretty good rotters.”
The priest looked at him and seemed inclined to let Michael elaborate this topic, but almost immediately he dismissed it with a commonplace.
“Oh, well,” Michael sighed, “I suppose something will happen soon to buck me up. I hope so. Perhaps the Kensitites will start making rows in churches again,” he went on hopefully. “Will you lend me the Apocryphal Gospels? We’re going to have a discussion about them at the De Rebus Ecclesiasticis.”
“Oh, the society hasn’t broken up?” enquired Mr. Viner.
“Rather not. Only everybody’s changed rather. Chator’s become frightfully Roman. He was Sarum last term, and he thinks I’m frightfully heretical, only of course I say a lot I don’t mean just to rag him. I say, by the way, who wrote ‘In a Garden’?”
“It sounds a very general title,” commented Mr. Viner, with a smile.
“Well, it’s some poem or other.”
“Swinburne wrote a poem in the Second Series of Poems and Ballads called ‘A Forsaken Garden.’ Is that what you mean?”
“Perhaps. Is it a famous poem?”
“Yes, I should say it was distinctly.”