le round cloud, that grew denser until
it had the likeness of a silver sphere. It was a mirror in the form of
a ball, but a mirror not shining uniformly; it was discoloured with
greyish patches that had a familiar shape. It circled slowly upon the
Angel's hands. It seemed no greater than the compass of a human skull,
and yet it was as great as the earth. Indeed it showed the whole
earth. It was the earth. The hands of the Angel vanished out of sight,
dissolved and vanished, and the spinning world hung free. All about the
bishop the velvet darkness broke into glittering points that shaped out
the constellations, and nearest to them, so near as to seem only a few
million miles away in the great emptiness into which everything had
resolved itself, shone the sun, a ball of red-tongued fires. The Angel
was but a voice now; the bishop and the Angel were somewhere aloof from
and yet accessible to the circling silver sphere.

At the time all that happened seemed to happen quite naturally, as
things happen in a dream. It was only later, when all this was a matter
of memory, that the bishop realized how strange and incomprehensible his
vision had been. The sphere was the earth with all its continents and
seas, its ships and cities, its country-sides and mountain ranges. It
was so small that he could see it all at once, and so great and full
that he could see everything in it. He could see great countries like
little patches upon it, and at the same time he could see the faces of
the men upon the highways, he could see the feelings in men's hearts and
the thoughts in their minds. But it did not seem in any way wonderful
to the bishop that so he should see those things, or that it was to him
that these things were shown.

"This is the whole world," he said.

"This is the vision of the world," the Angel answered.

"It is very wonderful," said the bishop, and stood for a moment
marvelling at the compass of his vision. For here was India, here
was Samarkand, in the light of the late afternoon; and China and the
swarming cities upon her silvery rivers sinking through twilight to the
night and throwing a spray and tracery of lantern spots upon the dark;
here was Russia under the noontide, and so great a battle of artillery
raging on the Dunajec as no man had ever seen before; whole lines of
trenches dissolved into clouds of dust and heaps of blood-streaked
earth; here close to the waiting streets of Constantinople were the
hills of