aw him coming back,
anxious and perturbed, with nothing decided. Or he imagined
himself being sent for in haste. . . . And there were other
pictures, more terrible; and against these he strove with all his
will, telling himself that it was inconceivable that such things
should be. Yet not one of his imaginings was as terrible as the
event itself. . . .

It came swift and sudden, without the faintest sign or premonition.

As he turned in his endless pacings, down at the farther end of
the room, his ears for the instant filled with the clatter of
some cart outside the open, barred windows, a figure came swiftly
into the room, without the sound of a footstep to warn him.
Behind he could make out two faces waiting. . . .

It was the Cardinal who stood there, upright and serene as ever,
with a look in his eyes that silenced the priest. He lifted his
hand on which shone his great amethyst, and at the motion,
scarcely knowing what he did, the priest was on his knees.

"_Benedictio Dei omnipotentis Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti,
descendat super te, et maneat semper._"

That was all; not a word more.

And as the priest sprang up with a choking cry, the slender
figure was gone, and the door shut and locked.

CHAPTER III

(I)

All day long there had hung a strange silence over the city,
unlike in its quality that ordinary comparative quiet of modern
towns to which the man who had lost his memory had become by now
accustomed. He knew well by now the gentle, almost soothing, hum
of busy streets, as the traffic and the footsteps went over the
noiseless pavements, and the air murmured with the clear subdued
notes of the bells and the melodious horns of the swifter
vehicles; all this had something of a reassuring quality,
reminding the listener that he lived in a world of men, active
and occupied indeed, but also civilized and self-controlled.

But the silence of this inner quarter of Berlin was completely
different. Its profoundness was sinister and suggestive. Now and
again came a rapid hooting note, growing louder and more
insistent, as some car, bound on revolutionary work, tore up some
street out of sight at forty miles an hour and away again into
silence. Several times he heard voices in sharp talk pass beneath
his window. Occasionally somewhere overhead in the great
buildings sounded the whir of a lift, a footstep, the throwing up
of a window. And to each sound he listened eagerly and intently,
ign