new how futile
was that prayer. It was gone like a breath in this vast, vivid
atmosphere of man. He had said mass, had he not? this morning--in white
vestments.--Yes; he had believed it all then--desperately, but truly;
and now....

To look into the future was as useless as to look into the past. There
was no future, and no past: it was all one eternal instant, present and
final....

Then he let go of effort, and again began to see with his bodily eyes.

* * * * *

The dawn was coming up the sky now, a steady soft brightening that
appeared in spite of its sovereignty to be as nothing compared with the
brilliant light of the streets. "We need no sun," he whispered, smiling
piteously; "no sun or light of a candle. We have our light on earth--the
light that lighteneth every man...."

The Campanile seemed further away than ever now, in that ghostly glimmer
of dawn--more and more helpless every moment, compared with the
beautiful vivid shining of the streets.

Then he listened to the sounds, and it seemed to him as if somewhere,
far down eastwards, there was a silence beginning. He jerked his head
impatiently, as a man behind him began to talk rapidly and confusedly.
Why would he not be silent, and let silence be heard?... The man stopped
presently, and out of the distance there swelled up a roar, as soft as
the roll of a summer tide; it passed up towards him from the right; it
was about him, dinning in his ears. There was no longer any individual
voice: it was the breathing of the giant that had been born; he was
crying out too; he did not know what he said, but he could not be
silent. His veins and nerves seemed alight with wine; and as he stared
down the long street, hearing the huge cry ebb from him and move toward
the palace, he knew why he had cried, and why he was now silent.

A slender, fish-shaped thing, as white as milk, as ghostly as a shadow,
and as beautiful as the dawn, slid into sight half-a-mile away, turned
and came towards him, floating, as it seemed, on the very wave of
silence that it created, up, up the long curving street on outstretched
wings, not twenty feet above the heads of the crowd. There was one great
sigh, and then silence once more.

* * * * *

When Percy could think consciously again--for his will was only capable
of efforts as a clock of ticks--the strange white thing was nearer. He
told himself that he had seen a hundred such before; and at the same
instant that this was differe