'D'you mean,' said Adam, 'that I've got to stay there? His tone was querulous.

"You've got to stay there,' said Mr Macarthy, 'and be grateful to be allowed to stay there.'

Adam frowned. 'If she attacks me again,' he murmured.

'She will not attack you again,' said Mr Macarthy, 'unless you deserve it.' There was something in his tone which forbade rejoinder. 'You need not go with her to eleven o'clock mass any more.'

In these unregenerate days Adam brightened at this; for he had taken it to mean that his new guardian considered it unnecessary for a youth of his intellectual attainments to go to mass at all, yet he had a misgiving : 'I don't think Father Innocent would like me to give up going to mass,' he said.

'I'm sure he would not,' was Mr Macarthy's unexpected rejoinder, 'but I don't think he would rather have you go with Miss Gannon to eleven than with me to twelve.' He added that if Adam thought otherwise that would be a matter for his conscience, but he did not advance this objection. He was not overjoyed at the prospect of spending over an hour in church instead of half an hour, but he preferred Mr Macarthy's company to Miss Gannon's. Yet was he mildly surprised at the notion of Mr Macarthy going to mass. Mr Behre never went at all, and Mr O'Meagher only under protest, to please his wife; here was a gentleman as liberal-minded as either yet so pious as to be willing even to sit out a sermon by Father Strong, than which there could be few severer trials of any one's patience.

'Are you fond of sermons, sir?' he asked as they came out of church for the first time together.

'You might as well ask me if I am fond of religion,' said Mr Macarthy with a gentle smile, ignoring his companion's mechanical effort to reach the holy water

font. Adam said he had never thought of anyone being fond of religion. 'Come,' said Mr Macarthy, 'you know you have been taught to sing "I love my holy faith."

Adam was much puzzled. 'I love my holy faith right enough,' said he; 'at least, I suppose I do; but faith is what you believe, isn't it? . . . and religion has nothing to do with that, has it?'

'Hasn't it?' was all that Mr Macarthy had said upon that occasion; but Adam returned to the attack. 'Look here,' said he, 'sermons, anyhow, have nothing to do with what you believe.'

Mr Macarthy answered pensively: 'To tell you what sermons have to do with what I believe would be a very long story. And, to be quite frank with you, I should say they have nothing to do with what most of the people you were brought up among believe. And that is for the simple reason that they believe in nothing . . . at all events, nothing that can be expressed in words.'

'Is there anything,' Adam asked, 'that can't be expressed in words?

Ask your own experience,' said Mr Macarthy.

Adam returned that he found it easier to ask him, saying, 'I don't rightly know whether I've ever had any experience.'

And then he remembered that Mr Macarthy had taken him very gently by the arm and said: 'My poor friend, I feared you might have had so much as to be disgusted with the world you know,' and Adam had answered that he supposed it was pretty disgusting, but somehow it had always interested him; and Mr Macarthy had declared, 'That's the answer I like to hear it shows that your experiences have not been wasted on you.'

And then Adam had asked him, 'What exactly,' repeating the words to emphasise them, 'What exactly is experience?' and Mr Macarthy had replied:

'Experience, according to my lights, is exactly everything.'

Half a year had passed since these things were said, and there was nothing in that half year that did not come back to Adam's mind as he watched, by the glow of the flickering firelight, the faces of Mr Macarthy, Herr Behre, Mr O'Meagher, and, startling to behold, the Marchesa, looking young as when she was Daphne Page.

Chapter Nine

THE MARCHESA IN THE FIRELIGHT

.

To Adam's mind it was, indeed, startling to see how young the Marchesa della Venasalvatica looked in the flickering firelight; true, all the company looked young in that ruddy light; even the gaunt Herr Behre, with his sweeping beard, a lean Father Christmas. was rejuvenated. Mr Macarthy himself seemed almost a boy. But, to Adam, the effect on the woman was the most amazing it was easy enough to understand now why she had had many lovers . . . at least it was easy to understand why many had sought her, but he could not understand how any woman could love more than one. Sorely as he despised his mother, and much as he doubted whether she had loved the man she called his father, he had never thought of the possibility of her loving anyone else. . . possibly because he found it impossible to love her, he had not thought about the subject at all, he had never even wondered why she did not marry O'Toole. . . . He felt he belonged to the world he saw round him in this room, not to the world that lived in Pleasant Street, much less that into which he had been born in Count Alley. And they were quite separate worlds, revolving in orbits absolutely distinct.

...

He looked hard at the Marchesa; her eyes were fixed on Mr Macarthy, and she was talking to him. eagerly. Adam heeded not what she said; he did not see her as what she was but rather as what she had been . . . someone had told him that she had

been to school with Lady Bland . . . that was nonsense Lady Bland was an old woman of that kind who was never young enough to go to school. He could not conceive of Lady Bland as ever having long hair down her back. Adam associated the idea of youth with the possession of long hair down your back-possibly you might wear it in a plait--but long hair you must have, and, for preference, it should be loose. Caroline Brady's hair had been loose . . . and so had Josephine O'Meagher's; Barbara Burns wore hers short, but she did not put it up, and if she had allowed it to grow he was sure it would have flown down her back in enough volume for her to play Lady Godiva in it. He was tickled by the idea of Barbara Burns playing Lady Godiva and of his playing Peeping Tom no, Peeping Tom was a silly ass, a dirty little snivelling ass; if he wanted to see Lady Godiva he ought to have up and said so. what would have happened to Peeping Tom if he had the pluck to say what he wanted . . . he could not remember enough about the atmosphere in which Peeping Tom lived to come to any conclusion in this matter; he could not even remember whether Tom were a real or a fictitious person. Plainly said, he knew even less about Peeping Tom than about Lady Godiva; for her he could visualise quite clearly (assisted by the pictures in the National Gallery), whereas Peeping Tom was just a pair of greedy eyes pitted in a fool's skull.

The Marchesa, in the days when she was Daphne Page, might have been rather like Lady Godiva. After all, she was a lady too, the daughter of a belted earl

Ihe knew that earls wore belts, because there was a song about it, (Cook's son, duke's son, son of a belted earl,) the meaning of which was recondite: it referred to something before his time. . . suddenly he heard his voice again, aloud, 'Why didn't you marry the baronet?' he asked.