Part at least of Julie's programme was fulfilled to the letter, for they lay long in bed talking—desultory, reminiscent talk, which sent Peter's mind back over the months and the last few days, even after Julie was asleep in the bed next his. Like a pageant, he passed, in review scene after scene, turning it over, and wondering at significances that he had not before, imagined. He recalled their first meeting, that instantaneous attraction, and he asked himself what had caused it. Her spontaneity, freshness, and utter lack of conventionality, he supposed, but that did not seem to explain all. He wondered at the change that had even then come about in himself that he should have been so entranced by her, He went over his early hopes and fears; he thought again of conversations with Langton; and he realised afresh how true it was that the old authorities had dwindled away; that no allegiance had been left; that his had been a citadel without a master. And then Julie moved through his days again—Julie at Caudebec, daring, iconoclastic, free; Julie at Abbeville, mysterious, passionate, dominant; Julie at Dieppe—ah, Julie at Dieppe! He marvelled that he had held out so long after Dieppe, and then Louise rose before him. He understood Louise less than Julie, perhaps, and with all the threads in his hand he failed to see the pattern. He turned over restlessly. It was easy to see how they had come to be in London; it would have been more remarkable if they had not so come together; but now, what now? He could not sum up Julie amid the shifting scenes of the last few days. She had been so loving, and yet, in a way, their love had reached no climax. It had, indeed, reached what he would once have thought a complete and ultimate climax, but plainly Julie did not think so. And nor did he—now. The things of the spirit were, after all, so much greater than the things of the flesh. The Julie of Friday night had been his, but of this night…? He rolled over again. What had she meant at the play? He told himself her tears were simple emotion, her laughter simple reaction, but he knew it was not true….
And for himself? Well, Julie was Julie. He loved her intensely. She could stir him to anything almost. He loved to be with her, to see her, to hear her, but he did not feel satisfied. He knew that. He told himself that he was an introspective fool; that nothing ever would seem to satisfy him; that the centre of his life was and would be Julie; that she was real, tinglingly, intensely real; but he knew that that was not the last word. And then and there he resolved that the last word should be spoken on the morrow, that had, indeed, already come by the clock: she should promise to marry him.
He slept, perhaps, for an hour or two, but he awoke with the dawn. The grey light was stealing in at the windows, and Julie slept beside him in the bed between. He tried to sleep again, but could not, and, on a sudden, had an idea. He got quietly out of bed.
"What is it, Peter?" said Julie sleepily.
He went round and leaned over her. "I can't sleep any more, dearest," he said. "I think I'll dress and go for a bit of a walk. Do you mind? I'll be in to breakfast."
"No," she said. "Go if you want to. You are a restless old thing!"
He dressed silently, and kept the bathroom door closed as he bathed and shaved. She was asleep again as he stole out, one arm flung loosely on the counterpane, her hair untidy on the pillow. He kissed a lock of it, and let himself quietly out of their suite.
It was still very early, and the Circus looked empty and strange. He walked down Piccadilly, and wondered at the clean, soft touch of the dawning day, and recalled another memorable Sunday morning walk. He passed very familiar places, and was conscious of feeling an exile, an inevitable one, but none the less an exile, for all that. And so he came into St. James's Park, still as aimlessly as he had left the hotel.
Before him, clear as a pointing finger in the morning sky, was the campanile of that stranger among the great cathedrals of England. It attracted him for the first time, and he made all but unconsciously towards it, Peter was not even in the spiritual street that leads to the gates of the Catholic Church, and it was no incipient Romanism that moved him. He was completely ignorant of the greater part of that faith, and, still more, had no idea of the gulf that separates it from all other religions. He would have supposed, if he had stopped to think, that, as with other sects, one considered its tenets, made up one's mind as to their truth or falsehood one by one, and if one believed a sufficient majority of them joined the Church. It was only, then, the mood of the moment, and when, he found himself really moving towards that finger-post he excused himself by thinking that as he was, by his own act, exiled, from, more familiar temples, he would visit this that would have about it a suggestion of France.
He wondered if it would be open as he turned into Ashley Gardens. He glanced at his watch; it was only just after seven. Perhaps an early Mass might be beginning. He went to the central doors and found them fast; then he saw little groups of people and individuals like himself making for the door in the great tower, and these he followed within.