ce he could remember, had been violently opposed
to the concessions to Rome and Ireland. It was intolerable that these
two places should be definitely yielded up to this foolish, treacherous
nonsense: they were hot-beds of sedition; plague-spots on the face of
humanity. He had never agreed with those who said that it was better
that all the poison of the West should be gathered rather than
dispersed. But, at any rate, there it was. Rome had been given up wholly
to that old man in white in exchange for all the parish churches and
cathedrals of Italy, and it was understood that mediaeval darkness
reigned there supreme; and Ireland, after receiving Home Rule thirty
years before, had declared for Catholicism, and opened her arms to
Individualism in its most virulent form. England had laughed and
assented, for she was saved from a quantity of agitation by the
immediate departure of half her Catholic population for that island, and
had, consistently with her Communist-colonial policy, granted every
facility for Individualism to reduce itself there _ad absurdum_. All
kinds of funny things were happening there: Oliver had read with a
bitter amusement of new appearances there, of a Woman in Blue and
shrines raised where her feet had rested; but he was scarcely amused at
Rome, for the movement to Turin of the Italian Government had deprived
the Republic of quite a quantity of sentimental prestige, and had haloed
the old religious nonsense with all the meretriciousness of historical
association. However, it obviously could not last much longer: the world
was beginning to understand at last.

He stood a moment or two at the door after his wife had gone, drinking
in reassurance from that glorious vision of solid sense that spread
itself before his eyes: the endless house-roofs; the high glass vaults
of the public baths and gymnasiums; the pinnacled schools where
Citizenship was taught each morning; the spider-like cranes and
scaffoldings that rose here and there; and even the few pricking spires
did not disconcert him. There it stretched away into the grey haze of
London, really beautiful, this vast hive of men and women who had
learned at least the primary lesson of the gospel that there was no God
but man, no priest but the politician, no prophet but the schoolmaster.

Then he went back once more to his speech-constructing.

* * * * *

Mabel, too, was a little thoughtful as she sat with her paper on her
lap, spinning down the