une, with full
capacities of democratic government and personal sacro-sanctity, even
King--if not Emperor of the West. The entire constitution was to be
remodelled, there was to be a complete rearrangement of the pieces;
crime was to be abolished by the mysterious power that had killed war;
there was to be free food--the secret of life was discovered, there was
to be no more death--so the rumours ran.... Yet that was lacking, to the
priest's mind, which made life worth living....

In Paris, while the volor waited at the great station at Montmartre,
once known as the Church of the Sacred Heart, he had heard the roaring
of the mob in love with life at last, and seen the banners go past. As
it rose again over the suburbs he had seen the long lines of trains
streaming in, visible as bright serpents in the brilliant glory of the
electric globes, bringing the country folk up to the Council of the
Nation which the legislators, mad with drama, had summoned to decide the
great question. At Lyons it had been the same. The night was as clear as
the day, and as full of sound. Mid France was arriving to register its
votes.

He had fallen asleep as the cold air of the Alps began to envelop the
car, and had caught but glimpses of the solemn moonlit peaks below him,
the black profundities of the gulfs, the silver glint of the shield-like
lakes, and the soft glow of Interlaken and the towns in the Rhone
valley. Once he had been moved in spite of himself, as one of the huge
German volors had passed in the night, a blaze of ghostly lights and
gilding, resembling a huge moth with antennae of electric light, and the
two ships had saluted one another through half a league of silent air,
with a pathetic cry as of two strange night-birds who have no leisure to
pause. Milan and Turin had been quiet, for Italy was organised on other
principles than France, and Florence was not yet half awake. And now the
Campagna was slipping past like a grey-green rug, wrinkled and tumbled,
five hundred feet beneath, and Rome was all but in sight. The indicator
above his seat moved its finger from one hundred to ninety miles.

He shook off the doze at last, and drew out his office book; but as he
pronounced the words his attention was elsewhere, and, when Prime was
said, he closed the book once more, propped himself more comfortably,
drawing the furs round him, and stretching his feet on the empty seat
opposite. He was alone in his compartment; the three men