"Deliver us from Evil..."

From Margery Allingham's The Tiger in the Smoke:

.... Avril had only one prayer which he used in private nowadays. He had reached that stage in his development when its few lines seemed to him to contain the absolute maximum which, from a purely personal point of view, he dared ask of his Creator. As he climbed out of his clothes, folding each garment carefully as he had been taught sixty years before, he repeated it, drawing the blessed sense out of every exact word.

"Our Father...

When he came to the part which was most important of all to him that night, he paused and said it twice. "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from Evil."

That was it. That was what he meant. Lead us not into temptation, for of that we have already enough within us and must resist it as best we can in our own way. But deliver us, take us away, hide us from Evil. From that contamination of death cover us up. That was his prayer, and tonight it was not going to be answered. ....

Avril is an elderly Anglican clergyman.

I've posted about this book before here and here.