other convent—for the rest of my life. . . . And I know that will please you, too, for you were always anxious for the good of my soul. . . . " She was going to do that if when she raised her eyes and really looked round the room she saw in it one man that looked presentable. She did not ask that he should more than look presentable, for she wanted nothing to do with the creature. He was to be a sign: not a prey!
She explained to the dead priest that she could not go all the world over to see if it contained a presentable man, but she could not bear to be in a convent for ever, and have the thought that there wasn't, for other women, one presentable man in the world. . . . For Christopher would be no good to them. He would be mooning for ever over the Wannop girl. Or her memory. That was all one . . . He was content with love. . . . If he knew that the Wannop girl was loving him in Bedford Park, and he in the Khyber States with the Himalayas between them, he would be quite content. . . . That would be correct in its way, but not very helpful for other women. . . . Besides, if he were the only presentable man in the world, half the women would be in love with him. . . . And that would be disastrous, because he was no more responsive than a bullock in a fatting pen.
"So, father," she said, "work a miracle. . . . It's not very much of a little miracle. . . . Even if a presentable man doesn't exist you could put him there. . . . I'll give you ten minutes before I look. . . . "
She thought it was pretty sporting of her, for, she said to herself, she was perfectly in earnest. If in that long, dim, green-lamp-shaded, and of course be-palm-leaved, badly-proportioned, glazed, ignoble public room, there appeared one decentish man, as
