the inland heights, the other half, at exactly
the same angle, sloped out eastward towards the sea. So that earth and
ocean could behold, where there had been a mere fiery mass, a thing
divided like a V--a cloven tongue of flame. But if it were a prodigy for
those distant, it was something beyond speech for those quite near. As
the echoes of Evan's last appeal rang and died in the universal uproar,
the fiery vault over his head opened down the middle, and, reeling back
in two great golden billows, hung on each side as huge and harmless as
two sloping hills lie on each side of a valley. Down the centre of this
trough, or chasm, a little path ran, cleared of all but ashes, and down
this little path was walking a little old man singing as if he were
alone in a wood in spring.

When James Turnbull saw this he suddenly put out a hand and seemed to
support himself on the strong shoulder of Madeleine Durand. Then after a
moment's hesitation he put his other hand on the shoulder of MacIan.
His blue eyes looked extraordinarily brilliant and beautiful. In many
sceptical papers and magazines afterwards he was sadly or sternly
rebuked for having abandoned the certainties of materialism. All
his life up to that moment he had been most honestly certain that
materialism was a fact. But he was unlike the writers in the magazines
precisely in this--that he preferred a fact even to materialism.

As the little singing figure came nearer and nearer, Evan fell on his
knees, and after an instant Beatrice followed; then Madeleine fell on
her knees, and after a longer instant Turnbull followed. Then the little
old man went past them singing down that corridor of flames. They had
not looked at his face.

When he had passed they looked up. While the first light of the fire
had shot east and west, painting the sides of ships with fire-light or
striking red sparks out of windowed houses, it had not hitherto struck
upward, for there was above it the ponderous and rococo cavern of its
own monstrous coloured smoke. But now the fire was turned to left and
right like a woman's hair parted in the middle, and now the shafts of
its light could shoot up into empty heavens and strike anything, either
bird or cloud. But it struck something that was neither cloud nor bird.
Far, far away up in those huge hollows of space something was flying
swiftly and shining brightly, something that shone too bright and flew
too fast to be any of the fowls of the air, th