says that
some things are so evidently out of the reach of Nature that they
must be done by a supernatural power. Well, where's the point of
reconciliation?"

Father Jervis was silent for a while.

* * * * *

The two were sitting on the upper deck of an air-ship towards
evening, travelling straight towards the setting sun.

He had grown almost accustomed to such views by now; and yet the
sight that had been unrolling itself gradually during the last
half-hour had held him fascinated for minute after minute. They
had taken ship in Rome after a day or two more of sight-seeing,
and had moved up the peninsula by stages, changing boats soon
after crossing the frontier, for one of the high-flying, more
leisurely and more luxurious vessels on which the more wealthy
classes travelled. They were due in Lourdes that evening; and,
ever since the higher peaks of the Pyrenees had come into sight,
had moved over a vision of bewildering beauty. To their left rose
the mountains, forming, it seemed to them at the height at which
they travelled, an enormous jagged and gigantic pile, hard-lined
as steel, yet irradiated with long rays, patches, and pools of
golden sunset-light alternated by amazing depths of the shadow
whose tones ran from peacock to indigo. Then from the feet of the
tumbled pile there ran out what appeared a loosely flung carpet
vivid and yet a soft green, patched here and there with white
towns, embroideries of woodland, lines of silver water. Yet this
too was changing as they watched the shadows grow longer with
almost visible movement. New and strange colours, varying about a
fixed note of blue according to the nature of that with which the
earth was covered, slowly came into being. Here, in front, now
and again a patch of water glowed suddenly, three thousand feet
beneath, as it met the shifting angle between the eye and the
sun; and beyond, far out across the darkening plain, shone the
remote line of the sea, itself ablaze with gold, and above and
about in every quarter burned the enormous luminous dome of sky.

* * * * *

"I can't put it all accurately," said Father Jervis at last. "I
mean I can't tell you off-hand all the tests that are exactly
applied to every case. But it's something like this. . . ."

He paused.

"Yes, tell me," said the other, still staring out at the softly
rolling landscape.

"Well, first," began the old priest slowly, "in the last fifty
years we've classi