ting had
been kept secret, on purpose to avoid a crowd; and beyond three
or four from the English College, with half a dozen private
friends of the Cardinal, a few servants, and perhaps a dozen
passers-by who had collected below in curiosity at seeing a
racing-volor attached to one of the disused flying stages on the
hill behind the Vatican--no one else, in the crowds that swarmed
now in the streets and squares of Rome, was even certain that an
envoy was going, still less of his identity.

Monsignor found himself, ten minutes before the start,
standing alone on the alighting-stage, while the Cardinal
still talked below.

As he stood there, now looking out over the city, where beneath
the still luminous sky the lights were already beginning to
kindle, and where in one or two of the larger squares he could
make out the great crowds moving to and fro--now staring at the
long and polished sides of the racing boat that swayed light as a
flower with the buoyancy of the inrushing gas--as he saw all
these things with his outward eyes, he was trying to understand
something of the new impulses and thoughts that surged through
him. He could have given little or no account of the reasons why
he was here; of his hopes or fears or expectations. He was as one
who watches on a sheet shadow-figures whirl past confusedly,
catching a glimpse here of a face or body, now of a fragmentary
movement, that appeared to have some meaning--yet grasping nothing
of the intention or plan of the whole. Or, even better, he was as
one caught in a mill-race, tossed along and battered, yet feeling
nothing acutely, curious indeed as to what the end would be, and
why it had had a beginning, yet fundamentally unconcerned. The
thing was so: there was no more to be said. He knew that it was
necessary that he should be here, about to start for almost
certain death, as that his soul should be inhabiting his body.

But even all these recent happenings had not as yet illuminated
him in the slightest as to the real character of the world that
he found so bewildering. He felt, vaguely, that he ought to have
by now all the pieces of the puzzle, but he was still as far as
ever from being able to fit them into a coherent whole. He just
perceived this--and no more--that the extraordinary tranquillity
of these Catholics in the presence of death was a real
contribution to the problem--as much as the dull earthliness of
the Socialist colony in America. It was not mer