s--all softened and made mystical in this grave
evening air--it was the wedding of delicate sound and clear light.
Above, the liquid orange sky; beneath, this sweet, subdued ecstasy of
bells.

"_Alma Redemptoris Mater_," whispered Percy, his eyes wet with tears.
"_Gentle Mother of the Redeemer--the open door of the sky, star of the
sea--have mercy on sinners. _The Angel of the Lord announced it to Mary,
and she conceived of the Holy Ghost_.... Pour, therefore, Lord, Thy
grace into our hearts. Let us, who know Christ's incarnation, rise
through passion and cross to the glory of Resurrection--through the same
Christ our Lord."

Another bell clanged sharply close at hand, calling him down to earth,
and wrong, and labour and grief; and he turned to see the motionless
volor itself one blaze of brilliant internal light, and the two priests
following the German Cardinal across the gangway.

It was the rear compartment that the men had taken; and when he had seen
that the old man was comfortable, still without a word he passed out
again into the central passage to see the last of Rome.

The exit-door had now been snapped, and as Percy stood at the opposite
window looking out at the high wall that would presently sink beneath
him, throughout the whole of the delicate frame began to run the
vibration of the electric engine. There was the murmur of talking
somewhere, a heavy step shook the floor, a bell clanged again, twice,
and a sweet wind-chord sounded. Again it sounded; the vibration ceased,
and the edge of the high wall against the tawny sky on which he had
fixed his eyes sank suddenly like a dropped bar, and he staggered a
little in his place. A moment later the dome rose again, and itself
sank, the city, a fringe of towers and a mass of dark roofs, pricked
with light, span like a whirlpool; the jewelled stars themselves sprang
this way and that; and with one more long cry the marvellous machine
righted itself, beat with its wings, and settled down, with the note of
the flying air passing through rising shrillness into vibrant silence,
to its long voyage to the north.

Further and further sank the city behind; it was a patch now: greyness
on black. The sky seemed to grow more huge and all-containing as the
earth relapsed into darkness; it glowed like a vast dome of wonderful
glass, darkening even as it glowed; and as Percy dropped his eyes once
more round the extreme edge of the car the city was but a line and a
bubble