Pennell laughed. "Now, yes, perhaps," he said deliberately; "but after the war …" and he shrugged his shoulders, like a Frenchman.
A shade passed over the girl's face, and she got up. "It is so," she said lightly. "Monsieur speaks very true—oh, very true! The girls of France now—they are gay, they are alive, they smile, and it is war, and you men want these things. But after—oh, I know you English—you'll go home and be—how do you say?—'respectable,' and marry an English miss, and have—oh! many, many bébés, and wear the top-hat, and go to church. There is no country like England…." She made a little gesture. "What do you believe, you English? In le bon Dieu? Non. In love? Ah, non! In what, then? Je ne sais!" She laughed again. "What 'ave I said? Forgive me, monsieur, and you also, Monsieur le Capitaine. But I do see a friend of mine. See, I go! Bon soir."
She looked deliberately at Peter a moment, then smiled comprehensively and left them. Peter saw that Alex had gone already; he asked no questions, but looked at Pennell inquiringly.
"I think so, padre; I've had enough of it to-night. Let's clear. We can get back in time for mess."
They went out into the darkening streets, crossed an open square, and turned down a busy road to the docks. They walked quickly, but Peter seemed to himself conscious of everyone that passed. He scanned faces, as if to read a riddle in them. There were men who lounged by, gay, reckless, out for fun plainly, but without any other sinister thought, apparently. There were Tommies who saluted and trudged on heavily. There were a couple of Yorkshire boys who did not notice them, flushed, animal, making determinedly for a destination down the street. There was one man at least who passed walking alone, with a tense, greedy, hard face, and Peter all but shuddered.
The lit shops gave way to a railed space, dark by contrast, and a tall building of old blackened stone, here and there chipped white, loomed up. Moved by an impulse, Peter paused, "Let's see if it's open, Pennell," he said. "Do you mind? I won't be a second."
"Not a scrap, old man," said Pennell, "I'll come in too."
Peter walked up to a padded leather-covered door and pushed. It swung open. They stepped in, into a faintly broken silence, and stood still.
Objects loomed up indistinctly—great columns, altars, pews. Far away a light flickered and twinkled, and from the top of the aisle across the church from the door by which they had entered a radiance glowed and lost itself in the black spaces of the high roof and wide nave. Peter crossed towards that side, and his companion followed. They trod softly, like good Englishmen in church, and they moved up the aisle a little to see more clearly; and so, having reached a place from which much was visible, remained standing for a few seconds.
The light streamed from an altar, and from candles above it set around a figure of the Mother of God. In front knelt a priest, and behind him, straggling back in the pews, a score or so of women, some children, and a blue-coated French soldier or two. The priest's voice sounded thin and low: neither could hear what he said; the congregation made rapid responses regularly, but eliding the, to them, familiar words. There was, then, the murmur of repeated prayer, like muffled knocking on a door, and nothing more.