"Downside was my school," he said quite proudly. Patrine had no acquaintance with Downside. "My father would have liked me to go to Harrow; but my uncle—my mother's brother—who paid for my education!—being a Catholic, naturally preferred the place where the Faith was taught. And my mother—as naturally—shared his preference. I was happy at Downside. The Fathers were thundering good to me. I worked hard—and I played hard—and when it wasn't Swot, or cricket, or football, or fives, or boxing, it was the making of flying-sticks, just shaved laths with paper wings, at first—and then a dodge much more ambitious, a model Wright in varnished card, with a propeller worked by a rubber release.... My father was pleased at my being a chip of the old block in my turn for mechanics. But when I wouldn't go up for Woolwich—when I entered at Strongitharm's College of Engineering on Tyneside, and spent two years at Folsom's Works at Sunderland—he rather gave me up, I fancy, as a low-minded kind of cad."
He shook himself as though to shake off the adverse paternal judgment.
"I had my reasons for not going in for the Army, though I love it. They weren't easy to explain, and so I didn't try. But my father never liked the idea of my being a civil engineer. Even my mother, and my uncle—dear old fellow—he understands me better now!"
"Why?"
"Because he's dead!" said Sherbrand simply, "and the Holy Souls know everything!"
"The Holy Souls?" By the glare of the flare-light her puzzled eyes questioned him.
"The Holy Souls in Purgatory. They're privileged to help us. We help them—by praying for them. It's—a spiritual intercommunication—a kind of endless chain. A circuit of influence, received and transmitted, not by etheric flashes, but by a medium more subtle. Prayer—in a word!"
His bright-winged intellect had outstripped her heavier, duller intelligence. She suddenly felt like a caterpillar on a cabbage-leaf, slow-moving, groping, but dimly conscious of a distant affinity with the jewel-winged butterfly hovering high in golden air....
"Prayer," she repeated dully, "do you believe in prayer?"
"Naturally!" said Sherbrand—"since I believe in God. Do not you? ..."