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Rh Sunday, when real time, God’s time, as I am venturing to call it in my sermon, comes in again.”

Diva had to bite her tongue to prevent herself bolting off on this new scent. After all, she had invested in crab to learn about duelling, not about summer-time.

“Well?” she said.

“We may have had words on that subject,” said the Padre, booming as if he was in the pulpit already, “but we should, I hope, none of us go so far as to catch the earliest train with pistols, in defence of our conviction about summer-time. No, Mrs. Plaistow, if you are right, and there is something to be said for your view, in thinking that they both went to such lengths as to be in time for the early train, in order to fight a duel undisturbed, you must look for a more solid cause than that.”

Diva vainly racked her brains to think of anything more worthy of the highest pitches of emotion than this. If it had been she and Miss Mapp who had been embroiled, hoarding and dress would have occurred to her. But as it was, no one in his senses could dream that the Captain and the Major were sartorial rivals, unless they had quarrelled over the question as to which of them wore the snuffiest old clothes.

“Give it up,” she said. “What did they quarrel about?”

“Passion!” said the Padre, in those full, deep tones in which next Sunday he would allude to God’s time. “I do not mean anger, but the flame that exalts man to heaven or&#8203;—&#8203;or does exactly the opposite!”

“But whomever for?” asked Diva, quite thrown off her bearings. Such a thing had never occurred to her, for, as far as she was aware, passion, except in the sense of