pirit
was the real one; that the Tower, the axe, the imminent shadow of death,
were little more than illusions; they were part of the staging,
significant and necessary, but with no substance of reality. The eternal
world in which God was all, alone was a fact. He felt no longer pity or
regret. Nothing but the sheer existence of a Being of which all persons
there were sharers, poised in an eternal instant, remained with him.

This strange sensation was scarcely disturbed by the rising of the lean
black figure from its knees; Chris watched him as he might have watched
the inevitable movement of an actor performing his pre-arranged part.
The bishop turned eastward, to where the sun was now high above the
Tower gate, and spoke once more.

"_Accedite ad eum, et illuminamini; et facies vestrae non confundentur_."

Then once more in the deathly stillness he turned round; and his eyes
ran over the countless faces turned up to his own. But there was a
certain tranquil severity in his face--the severity of one who has taken
a bitter cup firmly into his hand; his lips were tightly compressed, and
his eyes were deep and steady.

Then very slowly he lifted his right hand, touched his forehead, and
enveloped himself in a great sign of the cross, still looking out
unwaveringly over the faces; and immediately, without any hesitation,
sank down on his knees, put his hands before him on to the scaffold, and
stretched himself flat.

He was now invisible to Chris; for the low block on which he had laid
his neck was only a few inches high.

There was again a surge and a murmur as the headsman stepped forward
with the huge-headed axe over his shoulder, and stood waiting.

Then again the moments began to pass.

* * * * *

Chris lost all consciousness of his own being; he was aware of nothing
but the objective presence of the scaffold, of an overpowering
expectancy. It seemed as if something were stretched taut in his brain,
at breaking point; as if some vast thing were on the point of
revelation. All else had vanished,--the scene round him, the sense of
the invisible; there was but the point of space left, waiting for an
explosion.

There was a sense of wrenching torture as the headsman lifted the axe,
bringing it high round behind him; the motion seemed shockingly slow,
and to wring the strained nerves to agony....

* * * * *

Then in a blinding climax the axe fell