"When is the next service?"
"In half an hour the midnight service begins."
"Then all I ask is a seat where I can see the faces of your community."
The Reverend Father was reluctant, and mentioned the inviolability of the holy house, but Grant's casually dropped phrases on the attractive but obsolete custom of sanctuary and the still-surviving magic of King's Writ, made him change his mind.
"By the way, will you tell me — I'm afraid I'm very ignorant of your rules and ways of life — do the members of your community have business in the town?"
"No. Only when charity demands it."
"Have the brothers no traffic with the world at all then?" Herbert was going to have a perfect alibi, if that were so!
"For twenty-four hours once every moon, a brother goes into the world. That is contrived lest the unspottedness of communal life should breed self-righteousness. For the twelve hours of the day he must help his fellow beings in such ways as are open to him. For the twelve hours of the night he must meditate in a place alone: in summer in some open place, in winter in some church."
"I see. And the twenty-four hours begin — when?"
"From a midnight to a midnight."