of the spirit where two beings, Incarnate God and all
but Discarnate Man, were locked in embrace, a certain mental process
went on. Yet all was still as apart from him as a lighted stage and its
drama from a self-contained spectator. In the material world, now as
attenuated as a mirage, events were at hand; but to his soul, balanced
now on reality and awake to facts, these things were but a spectacle....

He turned to the altar again, and there, as he had known it would be, in
the midst of clear light, all was at peace: the celebrant, seen as
through molten glass, adored as He murmured the mystery of the
Word-made-Flesh, and once more passing to the centre, sank upon His
knees.

Again the priest understood; for thought was no longer the process of a
mind, rather it was the glance of a spirit. He knew all now; and, by an
inevitable impulse, his throat began to sing aloud words that, as he
sang, opened for the first time as flowers telling their secret to the
sun.

_O Salutaris Hostia
Qui coeli pandis ostium. . . ._

They were all singing now; even the Mohammedan catechumen who had burst
in a moment ago sang with the rest, his lean head thrust out and his
arms tight across his breast; the tiny chapel rang with the forty
voices, and the vast world thrilled to hear it....

Still singing, the priest saw the veil laid as by a phantom upon the
Pontiff's shoulders; there was a movement, a surge of figures--shadows
only in the midst of substance,

_ ... Uni Trinoque Domino ...._

--and the Pope stood erect, Himself a pallor in the heart of light, with
spectral folds of silk dripping from His shoulders, His hands swathed in
them, and His down-bent head hidden by the silver-rayed monstrance and
That which it bore....

_ ... Qui vitam sine termino
Nobis donet in patria ...._

... They were moving now, and the world of life swung with them; of so
much was he aware. He was out in the passage, among the white, frenzied
faces that with bared teeth stared up at that sight, silenced at last by
the thunder of _Pange Lingua_, and the radiance of those who passed out
to eternal life.... At the corner he turned for an instant to see the
six pale flames move along a dozen yards behind, as spear-heads about a
King, and in the midst the silver rays and the White Heart of God....
Then he was out, and the battle lay in array....

That sky on which he had looked an hour ago had passed from darkness
charged with light to light overla