The man Vyvian came. He came again and again, but not to dinner. Perhaps he suspected about the potatoes, and thought that they would not even be compensated¹ for by the pleasure of sneering² at the boarders. He came in the evenings and sat in the sitting-room³ and drank coffee (the only thing that was well cooked in Peggy's household), and talked to Hilary, and looked at Rhoda. Rhoda, embroidering⁴ apple-boughs on a green dress-front, shivered and trembled under his eyes.  
"Now I know," thought Peter, seeing Vyvian look, "what villains⁵ in books are really like. Vyvian is just like one; specially⁶ about the eyes." He was sitting near Rhoda, playing that sort of patience called calcul, distinguished⁷ from other patiences by the fact that it comes out; that was why Peter liked it. He had refused to-night to join in the game the others were playing, which was animal grab, though usually he enjoyed it very much. Peter liked games, though he seldom won them. But this evening he played patience by himself and sat by Rhoda and consulted her at crucial moments, and babbled⁸ of many things and knew whenever Vyvian looked and Rhoda shook. At half-past nine Vyvian stopped talking to Hilary and crossed the room and took the arm-chair on Rhoda's other side.
 
"Enthralling⁹ evenings you spend here," he remarked, including in his glance Rhoda's embroidery¹⁰, Peter's patience, and the animal grab table, from which cheerfully matter-of-fact farmyard and jungle cries proceeded with spirit.
 
Rhoda said nothing. Her head was bent¹¹ over her work. The next moment she pricked¹² her finger violently, and started. Before she could get her handkerchief out, Vyvian had his, and was enveloping¹³ her small hand in it.
 
"Too bad," he said, in a voice so low that the farmyard cries drowned it as far as Peter was concerned. "Poor little finger." He held it and the handkerchief closely in his two hands.
 
Rhoda, her colour flooding and ebbing¹⁴ over her thin face and thin neck down to the insertion yoke¹⁵ of her evening blouse, trembled like a captured bird. Her eyes fell from his look; a bold, bad look Peter thought, finding literary terminology¹⁶ appropriate.
 
The next moment the little table on which Peter was playing toppled over onto the floor with a small crash, and all his cards were scattered¹⁷ on the carpet.
 
Rhoda started and looked round, pulling her hand away as if a spell was broken.
 
"Dear me," said Peter regretfully, "it was just on coming out, too. I shan't try again to-night; it's not my night, obviously." He was picking up the cards. Rhoda watched him silently.
 
"Do you know calcul, Mr. Vyvian?" Peter enquired¹⁸, collecting scattered portions of the pack from under the arm-chair.
 
Mr. Vyvian stared at Peter's back, which was the part of him most visible at the moment.
 
"I really can't say I have the pleasure; no." (That, Peter felt certain, was an insolent¹⁹ drawl.)
 
"Would you like to learn it?" said Peter politely. "Are you fond of patience?"
 
"I can't say I am," said Mr. Vyvian.
 
"Oh! Then you would like calcul. People who are really fond of other patiences don't; they despise it because it comes out. I don't like any other sort of patience; I'm not clever enough; so I like this. Let me teach you, may I?"
 
Vyvian got up.
 
"Thanks; you're quite too kind. On the whole, I think I can conduct my life without any form of patience, even one which comes out."
 
"You have a turn, then, Miss Johnson," said Peter, arranging the cards. "Perhaps it'll come out for you, though it won't for me to-night."
 
"Since you are all so profitably occupied," said Vyvian, "I think I will say good night."
 
Peter said, "Oh, must you?... Good night, then. We play calcul most nights, so you can learn it some other time if you'd like to."
 
"A delightful²⁰ prospect," Vyvian murmured, his glance again comprehensively wandering round the room. "A happy family party you seem here.... Good night." He bent over Rhoda with his ironic²² politeness.
 
"I was going to ask you if you would come out with me to-morrow evening to a theatre.... But since your evenings seem to be so pleasantly filled otherwise...."
 
She looked up at him a moment, wavered, met his dark eyes, was caught by the old domination, and swept off her feet as of old.
 
"Oh, ... I should like to come...." She was a little breathless.
 
"Good! I will call for you then, at seven, and we will dine together. Au revoir."
 
"He swept her a mocking bow and was gone," Peter murmured to himself.
 
Then he looked at Rhoda, and found her eyes upon his face, wide, frightened, bewildered, and knew in a flash that she had never meant to consent to go out with Vyvian, that she had been caught by the old power he had over her and swept off her feet. That knowledge gave him confidence, and he could say, "You don't want to go, do you? Let me go after him and tell him."
 
"Oh," she pressed her hands together in front of her. "But I must go—I said I would."
 
Peter was on his feet and out of the door in a second. He saw Vyvian in the passage downstairs, putting on his coat. He spoke²³ from half-way down the stairs:
 
"Oh, Miss Johnson asks me to say she is sorry she can't go with you to-morrow night after all; she finds she has another engagement."
 
Vyvian turned and looked up at him, a slight smile lifting his lip.
 
"Really?" was all he said. "All the same, I think I will call at seven and try to persuade her to change her mind again. Good night."
 
As plainly as possible he had said to Peter, "I believe you to be lying." Peter had no particular objection to his believing that; he was not proud; but he did object to his calling at seven and trying to persuade Rhoda to change her mind again, for he believed that that would be a task easy of achievement.
 
He went back into the sitting-room. Rhoda was sitting still, her hands twisted together on the green serge on her lap. Peter sat down by her and said, "Will you come out with me instead to-morrow evening?" and she looked at him, her teeth clenched²⁴ over her lower lip as if to steady it, and said after a moment, forlornly, "If you like."
 
It was so much less exciting than going with Vyvian would have been, that Peter felt compunction.
 
"You shall choose the play," he said. "'Peter Pan,' do you think? Or something funny—'The Sins of Society,' or something?"
 
Rhoda whispered "Anything," nearly on the edge of tears. A vividness had flashed again into her grey life, and she was trying to quench²⁵ it. She had heroically, though as an afterthought, flung an extinguishing douche of water at it; but now that she had done so she was melting into unheroic self-pity.
 
"I want to go to bed," she said shakily, and did so, feeling for her pocket-handkerchief as she crossed the room.
 
At a quarter to seven the next evening Peter looked for Rhoda, thinking it well that they should be out of the house by seven o'clock, but couldn't find her, till Miss Clegson said she had met her "going into church" as she herself came out. Peter went to the church to find her. Rhoda didn't as a rule frequent churches, not believing in the creeds²⁶ they taught; but even to the unbelieving a church is often a refuge.
 
Peter, coming into the great dim place out of the wet fog, found it again, as he had long since known it to be, a refuge from fogs and other ills of living. Far up, the seven lamps that never go out burned dimly through the blurred²⁷ air. It was a gaudy²⁸ place, no doubt; over-decorated; a church for the poor, who love gaudiness²⁹. Perhaps Peter too loved gaudiness. Anyhow, he loved this place and its seven lamps and its shrines³⁰ and statued saints.
 
Surely, whatever one believed of the mysterious world and of all the other mysterious worlds that might be floating behind the veils, surely here was a very present help in trouble, a luminous³² brightness shining in a fog-choked world.
 
Peter, sitting by the door, sank into a great peace. Half-way up the church he saw Rhoda sitting very still. She too was looking up the church towards the lamps and the altar beyond them.
 
Presently a cassocked sacristan came and lit the vesper lights, for evensong was to be at seven, and the altar blazed out, an unearthly brilliance³³ in the dim place. The low murmur²¹ of voices (a patient priest had been hearing confessions³⁴ for an hour) ceased, and people began coming in one by one for service. Rhoda shivered a little, and got up and came down the church. Peter joined her at the door, and they passed shivering into the fog together.
 
"I was looking for you," said Peter, when they were out in the alley³⁵ that led to the church door.
 
"It's time we went, isn't it," she said apathetically³⁶.
 
Then she added, inconsequently, "The church seems the only place where one can find a bit of peace. I can't think why, when probably it's all a fairy-tale."
 
"I suppose that's why," said Peter. "Fairyland is the most peaceful country there is."
 
"You can't get peace out of what's not true," Rhoda insisted querulously.
 
"Oh, I don't know.... Besides, fairy-tales aren't necessarily untrue, do you think? I don't mean that, when I call what churches teach a fairy-tale. I mean it's beautiful and romantic and full of light and colour and wonderful things happening. And it's probably the truer for that."
 
"D'you believe it all?" queried³⁷ Rhoda; but he couldn't answer her as to that.
 
"I don't know. I never do know exactly what I believe. I can't think how anyone does. But yes, I think I like to believe in those things; they're too beautiful not to be true."
 
"It's the ugly things that are true," she said, coughing in the fog.
 
"Why, yes, the ugly things and the beautiful; God and the devil, if one puts it like that. Oh, yes, I believe very much in the devil; I can't believe that any street of houses could look quite like this without the help of someone utterly³⁸ given over to evil thinking. We aren't, you see; none of us are ugly enough in our minds to have thought out some of the things one sees; so there must be a devil."
 
Rhoda was silent. He thought she was crying. He said gently, "I say, would you like to come out to-night, or would you rather be quiet at home?" It would be safe to return home by half-past seven, he thought.
 
She said, in a small muffled³⁹ voice, that she didn't care.
 
A tall figure passed by them in the narrow alley, looming⁴⁰ through the fog. Rhoda started, and shrank back against the brick wall, clutching Peter's arm. The next moment the figure passed into the circle of light thrown down by a high lamp that glimmered⁴¹ over a Robbia-esque plaque⁴² shrine³¹ let into the wall, and they saw that it was a cassocked priest from the clergy-house going into church. Rhoda let out her breath faintly in a sigh, and her fingers fell from Peter's coat-sleeve.
 
"Oh," she whispered, "I'm frightened.... Let's stay close to the church; just outside the door, where we can see the light and hear the music. I don't want to go out into the streets to-night, Peter, I want to stay here. I'm ... so frightened."
 
"Come inside," suggested Peter, as they turned back to the church. "It would be warmer."
 
But she shook her head. "No. I'd rather be outside. I don't belong in there."
 
Peter said, "Why not?" and she told him, "Because for me it's the ugly things that are true."
 
So together they stood in the porch, outside the great oak door, and heard the sound of singing stealing out, fog-softened, and smelt⁴³ the smell of incense⁴⁴ (it was the festal service of some saint) that pierced the thick air with its pungent⁴⁵ sweetness.
 
They sat down on the seat in the porch, and Rhoda shivered, not with cold, and Peter waited by her very patiently, knowing that she needed him as she had never needed him before.
 
She told him so. &............