"The matter is that I had forgotten an important appointment. I can manage to keep it by the skin of my eyelids by taking the three o'clock train to Bournemouth instead of the two-thirty Express. You won't mind? You'll come with me and wait for me?"
"Not a little bit! ..." she answered to the one question and to the other: "Of course I will!"
CHAPTER LI
THE INWARD VOICE
The taxi, arrested and reversed on its way to Piccadilly Circus, was soon speeding Westwards. It whirred up Berkeley Street, traversed Berkeley Square, and turned into a short street ending in railings, enclosing grass wonderfully green for August, clipped bushes of evergreens, and some autumn-foliaged planes.
"We'll keep the man. I'll take his number. He'll look after my kit for me. Let me help you out, dear!"
He opened a gate in the railings and let her through. A large double house, with many windows, severely screened with brown curtains and wire blinds, loomed behind them, commanding the oblong patch of London green. The Modern Gothic porch of a lofty building of smoke-darkened freestone rose up before them. Patrine said under her breath, realising the ecclesiastical character of the edifice:
"Great Scott! It's a church!"
But Sherbrand, who had stayed to shut the gate in the railings did not hear the tabooed expletive. He caught her up and turned the massive iron handle of the porch-door which was braced by bands of iron with trefoil heads, and studded with heavy nails. They went down two shallow steps into an oblong, vaulted chamber, very cool and dark and fragrant, tesselated with squares of black and white stone. Slabs of black marble lined the walls to the height of a tall man. An inscription in Early English lettering, cut into the black background and gilded, caught Patrine's eye in passing. She read beneath the symbol of the Cross:
