r Office--the _War_ Office, my friend. Watch how the
spears of light strike redly into that canopy of foulness hanging above
Kynoch's Works. A Ministry of Munitions controls all that poisonous
activity. Mario, it is the second Crucifixion. The Jews crucified the
Body; all the world has conspired to crucify the Spirit.

"The Word has failed. There lies the reading of your day dream, Mario,
your dream of the _Sheikh_ of El Wasr. Look how the shadow of the
campanile creeps out beneath us, over church and War-Office-Annexe, over
life and over death. Religion is a corpse and the world is its morgue.
But out of corruption comes forth sweetness. No creature known to man
possesses more intense vitality than the _dermestes_ beetle which
propagates in the skull of a mummy. From the ashes of the Cross you
arise. Christ is dead; long live Christianity. Behold the world at your
feet. Courage, my friend, open the Gates and lead mankind into the
garden of the gods."

X

That Paul had established a platform strong enough to support the tower
of a new gospel became evident. His second book of Revelations, _The
Key_, was awaited eagerly by the whole of the civilised world. In
determined opposition to the wishes of Bassett, unmoved by an offer from
an American newspaper which would have created a record serial price,
Paul had declined to print any part of _The Key_ in a periodical. With
the publication of _The Gates_, which but heralded a wider intent, he
had become the central figure of the world. Politically he was regarded
as a revolutionary so dangerous that he merited the highest respect, and
the tactful attitude of the Roman Church was adopted by those temporal
rulers who recognised in Paul Mario one who had almost grasped a power
above the power of kings.

"In Galileo's days," said Thessaly on one occasion, "a man who
proclaimed unpalatable truths was loaded with chains and hurled into a
dungeon. Nowadays we load him with honours and raise him to the peerage,
an even more effectual method of gagging him. Try to avoid the House of
Peers, Mario. Your presence would disturb the orthodox slumbers of the
bishops."

On the eve of the opening of the German offensive Paul received a long
letter from Don which disturbed him very much. It was the outcome of
Don's last interview with Flamby and represented the result of long
deliberation. "I have had a sort of brain-wave," wrote Don in his
whimsical fashion, "or rush of intellect to t