"To consider it, Mr. Mario? Rome has always taught it. Have we not a Purgatory?"

"For the justified, but what of the sinner?"

"Have we no prayers for the dead? You maintain that no man is fit for Heaven; so does Rome—that no soul is lost whilst one prayer is offered for its redemption. We agree with you. In The Gates you have done no more than to analyse the symbolism of Roman ritual, defining Purgatory as a series of earthly experiences and Heaven as their termination. Have you considered, Mr. Mario, that whatever a man's belief may be, he can do no more than to be true to himself?"

"And is Rome true to Rome, your Eminence? Before the horrors of war the spirit stands aghast, but are the horrors perpetrated by Prussia reconcilable with the teachings of St. Peter? For lesser crimes, thousands burned at the stake during the Pontificate of Innocent VIII; yet Rome to-day hears German prelates calling upon God to exalt the murderer, the ravisher, and is silent. If Rome is untrue to Rome the rock upon which the Church of St. Peter stands may yet be shattered."

Cardinal Pescara twisted the ring upon his finger, regarding Paul with a glance of almost pathetic entreaty. "You hurt me, Mr. Mario," he said. "I do not recall that you have levelled this charge against the Catholic Church in your book. But it seems to me to be rather a criticism of internal administration than of doctrine, after all. If no man be worthy of hell, why should his Holiness abandon sinful Germany? It is for him to decide, since all laws are locked within the bosom of the Pope."

"I would unlock those laws, your Eminence, and set them up before the world in place of empty dogmas. I would have open sanctuaries and open minds. Humanity has outgrown its childhood and demands more reasonable fare than that which sufficed for its needs in the nursery."

"That you honestly suppose this to be so I cannot question; but what you term 'open-mindedness'—implying a state of receptivity—is in fact an utter rejection of all established spiritual truths. The open-minded and the atheistical draw dangerously closer day by day. The only thing of which they are sure is that they are sure of nothing and their credo is 'I do not believe.' Broadly speaking, Mr. Mario, our differences may be said to revolve around one point. Of the construction which you place upon the Word of the Messiah I shall say nothing, but it is your projected second book in which, if I understand your purpose, you propose to lay bare the 'arcana of the initiates' (the words are your own) which, if it ever be published, will indisputably occasion action by the Holy See. Let me endeavour to bring home to you the fact that I believe you are about to make a dreadful and irrevocable mistake."

The hazel eyes momentarily lost their softness and the Cardinal's expression grew gravely imperious. Paul felt again the shock of this man's powerful will and braced himself for combat.

"I shall always listen to your Eminence with respect."

"Respect, Mr. Mario, is due to any man who is sincere in his efforts to promote the well-being of his fellows, even though his efforts be mistaken. In the symbolism of the Church and even in the form of the Papal crown you have recognised the outward form of an inner truth. You have applauded the ritual of the Mass and the traditions of the Catholic priesthood because they approach so nearly to that mystic ideal which gave potency to the great hierarchies of the past, notably to that of Ancient Egypt. I shall venture to ask you a question. Outside the sacred colleges of the Egyptian priesthood what was known in those days of the truth underlying the symbols, Isis, Osiris and Amen-Ra?"

"Nothing."

"Then why did you admire a system diametrically opposed to that which you would set up?"

"Because it was ideally suited to the age of the Pharaohs. The world has advanced since those days but religion has tried to stand still."

"The world has advanced, and in The Gates we hear the tap of the cripple's crutch upon the pavements of our enlightened cities. The world has advanced, Mr. Mario, and is filled with sad-eyed mothers and with widows who have scarcely known wifehood. Where is your evidence that this generation is ready for the 'blinding light of truth'? You believe that you have been given a mission. I do not question your good faith. You believe that throughout a series of earlier physical experiences you have been preparing for this mission. Granting for a moment that this is so, what proof can you offer of your having attained to that state of perfection which you, yourself, lay down as a sine qua non of mastership? If it should be revealed to you that you have actually lived before, but as a man enthusiastic, ardent and blinded by those passions which are a wall between humanity and the angels, should you not take pause? You have granted the authority of Rome. Wherein does your own reside? Are you sure that for you the veil is wholly lifted? Are you sure that you have no false friends? Are you sure that you comprehend the meaning of your own tenet—'Perfect Love and Fulfilment'? If you have any doubts upon these points, Mr. Mario, hold your hand. It can profit the world nothing to restir the witches' cauldron. Love must always be the mainspring of life and honour its loftiest ideal. Teach men how to live and leave it to Death to reveal the hereafter. Not for the good of mankind do I tremble—God has the world in his charge—but for yourself. We all are granted glimpses of our imperfections, perhaps in the form of twinges of conscience, or dreams, or as you would say in the form of hazy memories inherited from earlier imperfect lives. If these gentle lessons fail, swift blows rain upon us. But we are never permitted to fall into error unchecked. Read well the tablet of your soul and read between the lines. Measure your strength and test your purity ere you dare to attempt to shatter at a blow the structure of the ages. When Lucifer fell from the Divine order, it was lust of knowledge that prompted him to set his own will in opposition to the Almighty. I speak in figures which you will understand. Lucifer became the great Self-Centre as opposed to the greater God-Centre. He is more active amongst us to-day than he has been for many ages. He has numerous servants and handmaidens. Are you sure, Mr. Mario, that you can recognise them when they pass you by? Remember that the Devil is a philosopher. If we may learn anything from the ancient creeds surely it is that the secret of governing humanity is never to tell humanity the truth."

VII

Some days later Flamby was taking tea by appointment in Orlando James's studio. Don had written from France urging her to divulge the nature of her misgivings respecting Paul and their connection with James, and Flamby, greatly daring, had determined to obtain confirmation of the doubts which troubled her. She wore the Liberty dress of grey velvet, and as she bent over an Arab coffee-table and her pretty hands busied themselves amid the old silver of the tea-service, Flamby made a delectable study which Orlando James who watched her found to be exceedingly tantalising. He flicked cigarette ash on to the floor and admired the creamy curve of Flamby's neck as she lowered her head in the act of pouring out tea.

"What a pretty neck you have, kid," he said in his drawling self-confident way.

"Yes," replied Flamby, dropping pieces of sugar into the cups, "it isn't so bad as necks go. But I should have liked it to be white instead of yellow."

"It isn't yellow: it's a delicious sort of old-ivory velvet which I am just itching to paint."

"Then why don't you?" inquired Flamby, composedly settling herself in a nest of cushions on the floor.

"Because you will never pose for me."

"You have never asked me."

"Why I asked you only a few days ago to pose for my next big picture."

Flamby sipped hot tea and looked up at James scornfully. "Do you think I'm daft!" she said. "I am a painter not a model. If you want to paint my portrait I don't mind, but if you've got an idea in your head that I am ever likely to pose for the figure you can get it out as quick as lightning."

James lounged in a long rest-chair, watching her languidly. "You're a funny girl," he said. "I thought I was paying you a compliment, but perhaps it's a sore point. Where's the flaw, kid?"

"The flaw?"

"Yes, what is it—knotty knees? It certainly isn't thick ankles."

Flamby had much ado to preserve composure; momentarily her thoughts became murderous. This was truly a 'sore point,' but mentally comparing Orlando James with Sir Jacques she was compelled to admit that the bold roue was preferable to the masked satyr. She placed her tea cup on a corner of the Arab table and smoothed her skirt placidly.

"Spotty skin," she replied. "Haven't you seen my picture in the newspapers advertising somebody's ointment?"

James stared in the dull manner which characterised his reception of a joke. "Is that funny, Flamby?" he said, "because I don't believe it is true."

"Don't you? Well, it doesn't matter. Do you want any more tea?"

He passed his cup, watching her constantly and wondering why since he had progressed thus far in her favour not all his well-tried devices could advance him a single pace further. He had learned during a long and varied experience that the chief difficulty in these little affairs was that of breaking down the barrier which ordinarily precludes discussion of such intimately personal matters. Once this was accomplished he had found his art to be a weapon against which woman's vanity was impotent. Unfortunately for his chance of success, Sir Jacques had also been a graduate of this school of artistic libertinage.

"There is something selfish about a girl who keeps her beauty all to herself when it might delight future generations," he said, taking the newly filled cup from Flamby. "Besides, it really is a compliment, kid, to ask you to pose for a big thing like The Dreaming Keats. It's going to be my masterpiece."

"Our next picture is always going to be our masterpiece," murmured Flamby wisely, taking an Egyptian cigarette from the Japanese cabinet on the table.

"But I think I can claim to know what I'm talking about, Flamby. It means that I regard you as one of the prettiest girls in London."

"Your vanity is most soothing," said Flamby, curling herself up comfortably amid the poppy-hued cushions and trying to blow rings of smoke.

"Where does the vanity come in?"

"In your delightful presumption. Do you honestly believe, Orlando, that any woman in London would turn amateur model if you asked her?"

"I don't say that any woman would do so, but almost any pretty woman would."

"I don't believe it."

"You know who my model was for Eunice, don't you?"

"I have heard that Lady Daphne Freyle posed for it and the hair is like hers certainly, but the face of the figure is turned away. Oh!—how funny."

"What is funny?"

"It has just occurred to me that a number of your pictures are like that: the figure is either veiled or half looking away."

"That is necessary when one's models are so well-known."

Flamby hugged her knees tightly and gazed at the speaker as if fascinated. She was endeavouring to readjust her perspective. Vanity in women assumed many strange shapes. There were those who bartered honour for the right to live and in order that they might escape starvation. These were pitiful. There were some who bought jewels at the price of shame, and others who sold body and soul for an hour in the limelight. These were unworthy of pity. But what of those who offered themselves, like ghawazi in a Keneh bazaar, in return for the odious distinction of knowing their charms to be "immortalised" by the brush of Orlando James? These were beyond Flamby's powers of comprehension.

"But Lady Daphne is an exception. I am only surprised that she did not want a pose which rendered her immediately recognisable."

"She did," drawled James, "but I didn't."

"Was she really an ideal model or did you induce her to pose just to please your colossal vanity?"

"My dear Flamby, it is next to impossible to find a flawless model among the professionals. Hammett or anybody will tell you the same. They lack that ideal delicacy, what Crozier calls 'the texture of nobility,' which one finds in a woman of good family. Half the success of my big subjects has been due to my models. This will be recognised when the history of modern art comes to be written. I am held up at the moment, and that is the reason why I am anxious to start on Keats."

"What is holding you up?"

"My model for The Circassian has jibbed. Otherwise it would be finished."

"There are disadvantages attaching to your method after all?"

"Yes. I shall avoid married models in future. Husbands are so inartistic."

"You don't want me to believe that some misguided married woman has been posing for The Circassian?"

"Why misguided? It will be a wonderful picture."

"It is that Eastern thing is it not?—the marble pool and a half veiled figure lying beside it with one hand in the water?"

"Yes, but I've had to shelve it. Did I show you that last sketch for the Keats picture?"

"You did, Orlando; but dismiss the idea that I am going to play Phryne to your Apelles. It won't come off. It may work successfully with daft society women who have got bored with pretending to be nurses and ambulance drivers but you really cannot expect Flamby Duveen to begin competing with the professional models. I could quote something from Ovid that would be quite to the point but you wouldn't understand and I should have to laugh all by myself."

"You are a tantalising little devil," said James, his dull brain seeking vainly a clue to the cause of Flamby's obduracy.

Flamby, meanwhile maturing her plan, made the next move. "Is the Keats picture to be more important than The Circassian?" she asked naively.

"Of course," James replied, believing that at last a clue was his. "I have told you that it will be my masterpiece." He had offered an identical assurance to many a hesitant amateur.

"Is your model for The Circassian really very pretty?"

"She is; but of a more ordinary type than you, kid. You are simply a nymph in human shape. You will send the critics crazy."

He watched her with scarcely veiled eagerness, and Flamby, placing the end of her cigarette in a silver ash-tray, seemed to be thinking.

"Is she—well-known?"

James recognised familiar symptoms and his hopes leapt high. "If I show you the canvas and you recognise the model will you promise not to tell anybody? I am painting it by a new process. I got the idea from Wiertz. The violet gauze of the veil is only indicated yet."

Flamby nodded, watching him wide-eyed. Her expression was inscrutable. He crossed the big studio and wheeled an easel out from the recess in which it had been concealed. The canvas was draped and having set it in a good light he turned, taking a step forward. "No telling," he said.

"No," replied Flamby, rising from her extemporised diwan.

James towered over her slight figure vastly. "Give me a kiss and I will believe you," he said.

Flamby felt a tingling sensation and knew that a flush was rising from her neck to her brow, but with success in view she was loth to abandon her scheme. "Show me first," she said.

"Oh, no. Be a sport, kid. You might do me no end of harm if you blabbed. Give me a kiss and I shall know we are pals." He placed his hand on Flamby's shoulder and she tried not to shrink. The rich colour fled from her cheeks and her oval face assumed that even, dusky hue which was a danger signal, but which Orlando James failed to recognise for one.

"I don't want to kiss you; I want to see the picture."

"And I don't want you to see the picture until you have kissed me," replied James, smiling confidently and clasping his arm around Flamby's shoulders. "Only one tiny kiss and I shall know I can trust you."

He drew her close, and Flamby experienced a thrill of terror because of the strength of his arm and her own helplessness. But she averted her face and thrust one hand against James's breast, fighting hard to retain composure. He bent over her and thereupon Flamby knew that the truce must end. Her heart began to throb wildly.

"I won't kiss you!" she cried. "Let me go!"

Orlando James looked into her face, now flushed again and found the lure of Flamby's lips to be one beyond his powers of rejection. "Don't get wild, kiddie," he said softly. "You need not be cruel."

"Let me go," repeated Flamby in a low voice.

He held her closer and his face almost touched hers. Whereupon the storm burst. "Are you going to let me go?" said Flamby breathlessly; and even as she spoke James sought to touch her lips. Flamby raised her open hand and struck him hard upon the cheek. "Now will you let me go!"

Orlando James laughed loudly. "You lovely little devil," he cried. "I shall kiss you a hundred times for that."

Backward swung Flamby's foot and James received a shrewd kick upon his shin. But the little suede shoes which Flamby wore were incapable of inflicting such punishment as those heavy boots which once had wrought the discomfiture of Fawkes. James threw both arms around her and lifted her bodily, as one lifts a child, smiling into her face. She battled against him, hand and foot, but could strike with slight force because of her helpless position. He crushed her to him and kissed her on the lips. As he did so she remembered the form of her French shoes and raising her right foot she battered madly at his knee with the high wooden heel. One of the blows got home, and uttering a smothered curse James dropped her, but did not release her.

"You low dirty swine!" she cried at him.

He held her by her arms and now she suddenly twisted violently, writhed and wrenched herself free, leaving a velvet sleeve in James's grasp and leaping back from him, one creamy shoulder bared by the tattered gown and her wonderful hair loosened and foaming about her head to lend her the aspect of a beautiful Bisharin girl, wild as the desert gazelle. James saw that she wore an antique gold locket upon a thin chain about her neck. He clutched at her, but she bounded back again, her eyes blazing dangerously and snatched up the Japanese cabinet. With all her strength she hurled it at his head.

"Take that," she screamed, flushing scarlet—"blast you!"

He ducked, inhaling sibilantly, but a corner of the little cabinet struck his forehead, and he stumbled, caught his foot against a cushion and fell across the table amid a litter of china and silver ware. He clutched at the draped picture, and canvas and easel fell crashing to the floor, revealing the nearly completed Circassian. Flamby sprang across the studio, wrenched open the door and ran out banging it behind her. As it closed she fell back against it, panting—and saw Paul Mario approaching from the direction of Chauvin's.

VIII

In the glance which Paul gave Flamby there was something odic and strange. He experienced a consciousness of giving and a consciousness of loss. Flamby was aware of intense shame and mad joy. She threw her arm over her bare shoulder to hide it and shrank back against the door not daring to raise her eyes again. She was trembling violently. Beneath her downcast lashes she could see the door of Chauvin's studio, and suddenly she determined to fly there for shelter, as had been her original intention. She started—but Paul held her fast. Flamby hid her face against his coat.

"Flamby—who has done this?" Paul's voice was very low and very steady.

Flamby swallowed emotionally, but already her quick wit was at work again and she realised that Paul must be prevented from entering James's studio, must be spared a sight of the picture which lay upon the floor. "We were—just ragging," she said tremulously, "and it got too rough. So I—ran out My dress is torn, you see." She did not look up. Paul's Harris tweed coat had a faint odour of peat and tobacco. She realised that she was clutching him for support.

He was carrying a light Burberry on his arm, and he held it open for her. "Slip this on, Flamby," he said, in the same low, steady voice, "and sit there on the ledge for a moment." He helped her to put on the coat, which enveloped her grotesquely, led her to the low parapet which surrounded the figure of the dancing faun and stepped toward the door of James's studio.

Flamby leapt up and clutched his arm with both hands. "No, no!" she cried. "You must not go in there! Oh, please listen to me! I don't want you to go in."

Paul half turned, looking down at her. "Don't excite yourself, Flamby. I shall not be a moment."

But she clutched him persistently until, looking swiftly up at him, she saw the pallor of his olive skin and the expression in his eyes. She allowed him to unlock her fingers from his arm and she dropped down weakly on to the narrow stone ledge as he crossed to the studio door. It was very still in the courtyard. Some sparrows were chirping up on a roof, but the sounds of the highroad were muted and dim. Paul grasped the brass handle and sought to turn it. As he did so Flamby realised that James had bolted the door. Paul stood for a moment looking at the massive oak and then turned away, rejoining Flamby. "Come along to Chauvin's," he said. "I will get a cab for you."

The only occupant of Chauvin's studio was a romantic-looking man wearing a very dirty smock, a man who looked like an illustration for La Vie de Boheme, so that a stranger must have mistaken him for a celebrated artist although he actually combined the duties of a concierge with those of a charwoman. He displayed no surprise when Flamby came in, wild-haired, arrayed in Paul's Burberry.

"See if you can get a taxi, Martin," said Flamby, dropping into a huge Jacobean arm-chair over which a purple cloak was draped. A King Charles spaniel who had been asleep on a cushion awoke immediately and jumped on to her knees. Flamby caressed the little animal, looking down at his snub-nosed face intently. Paul walked up and down the studio. He began speaking in a low voice.

"I had hoped, Flamby, that you had done as I once asked you to do and dropped—Orlando James."

"I did," said Flamby quickly and continuing to caress the spaniel. "I wrote to Don the very night you told me to."

"And I am sure that Don agreed with me."

"He did, yes. But—Don knows I still pretend to be friends with—James."

Paul stood still, facing her, but she did not look up. "Don knows this?"

Flamby nodded her head. She did not seem to care that her hair was in disorder. "He knows that I hate James, though," she added.

"I don't understand at all. Whatever can have induced you to trust yourself in that ruffian's studio?"

"I've been before. It was my fault. I made him think he was doing fine."

"Doing fine?"

"He is so infernally conceited. I wanted to let him down. But he got desperate. He is not a man; he's a pig. But I threw a cabinet at him."

"Did you hit him?" asked Paul grimly.

"Yes; but I wish it had been a brick."

"So do I," replied Paul. "I shall not ask you for particulars, Flamby, but I shall take certain steps which will make London too hot to hold Mr. Orlando James." His restrained passion was electric and it acted upon Flamby in a curious way and seemed to set her heart singing.

When Martin returned to report that a cab waited, Paul walked out under the arch to the street and having placed Flamby in the cab, he held her hand for a moment and their glances met. "Dear little wild-haired Flamby," he said, and his voice had the same note of tenderness which she had heard in it once before and of which she had dreamed ever since. "Take care of yourself, little girl. You belong to the clean hills and the sweet green woods which I almost wish you had never left."

* * * * *

For long after the cab had passed around the corner Paul stood by the archway staring in that direction, but presently he aroused himself and returned to the courtyard. He tried the handle of James's door but learned that the bolt remained fastened, whereupon he determined to proceed to Thessaly's flat.

A definite change had taken place in the relations existing between himself and Flamby. For all her wildness and her reckless behaviour, that day she had appealed to him as something fragrantly innocent and bewilderingly sweet. The memory of the Charleswood photographs had assumed a different form, too, and he suddenly perceived possibilities of an explanation which should exculpate the girl from a graver sin than that of bravado. He had seen something in her eyes which had rendered such an explanation necessary, had found there something stainless as the heart of a wild rose. Devil-may-care was in her blood and he doubted if she knew the meaning of fear, but for evil he now sought in vain and wondered greatly because he had so misjudged her. He experienced a passionate desire to protect her, to enfold her in careful guardianship. He knew that he had not wanted to leave her at the gate of the studios, but he had only recognised this to be the case at the very moment of parting. He had never entertained an interest quite identical in anyone and he sought to assure himself that it was thus that a father thought of his child. He wondered if it had been her hair or her lips which had maddened Orlando James; he wondered why she had been in the studio; and a cold hatred of James took up a permanent place in his heart.

In the narrow thoroughfare connecting Victoria Street with that in which Thessaly's flat was situated were a number of curious shops devoted to the sale of church ornaments, altar candlesticks, lecterns, silk banners, cassocks and birettas, statuettes of the Virgin, crucifixes and rosaries. Paul stood before the window of one, reading the titles of the books which were also displayed there, Garden of the Soul, The Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi. A phrase arose before him; he did not seem to hear it but to see it dancing in smoky characters which partially obscured a large ivory crucifix: "To shatter at a blow the structure of the ages." He recalled that Cardinal Pescara had used those words. His mood was unrestful and his brain was haunted by unaccountable memories, so that when he found himself in the shadow of the lofty campanile of Westminster Cathedral his spirit became translated to an obscure lane in Cairo. Faint organ notes reached his ears.

Thessaly received him in a little room having a balcony which overhung the street. Delicate ivory plaques decorated the walls and the fanciful curtains of Indian muslin hung like smoke of incense in the still air. There were some extraordinary pastels by Degas forming a kind of frieze. The evening was warm and the campanile upstood against a sky blue as a sapphire dome. The Cairo illusion persisted.

"Do you know, Thessaly," said Paul, "to-night I cannot help thinking of a scene I once witnessed in El Wasr. I formed one of a party of three and we were wandering aimlessly through those indescribable lanes. Pipes wailed in the darkness to an accompaniment of throbbing—throbbing of the eternal darabukeh which is like the pulsing of evil life through the arteries of the secret city. Harsh woman-voices cried out in the night and bizarre figures flitted like bats from the lighted dance halls into the shadows of nameless houses. We came to a long, narrow street entirely devoted to those dungeon-like chambers with barred windows whose occupants represent all the classified races of the East and all the unclassified sins of the Marquis de Sade. Another street crossed it at right angles and at the cross roads was a mosque. The minaret stood up blackly against the midnight sky and as we turned the corner we perceived what appeared to be another of the 'cages' immediately facing the door of the mosque. Out of the turmoil of the one street we came into this other and leaving discord and evil behind us entered into silence and peace. We looked in at the barred window. Woman voices reached us faintly from the street we had left and the muted pulse of the darabukeh pursued us. Upon a raised dais having candles set at his head and feet reposed a venerable sheikh, dead. His white beard flowed over his breast. He reclined in majestic sleep where the pipes were wailing the call of El Wasr, and the shadow of the minaret lay upon life and upon death. Is it not strange that this scene should recur to me to-night?"

"Strange and uncomplimentary," replied Thessaly. "Whilst I have no objection to your finding an analogy between my perfectly respectable neighbours and the women of the Wasr, the role of a defunct and saintly Arab does not appeal to me." Some reflection of the setting sun touched him where he stood and bathed him as in fire. The small tight curls of hair and beard became each a tongue of flame and his eyes glittered like molten gold. "Pardon my apparent rudeness, but I don't think you are listening."

"I am not," murmured Paul. "Your words reach me from a great distance. My spirit is uneasy to-night, and whilst myself I remain in your ivory room and hear you speak another self stands in a vast temple of black gleaming granite before the shrine of a golden bull."

"You are possibly thinking of Apis. From Cairo you have proceeded to Sakkara. Or are the gaudy hue of my hair and the yeoman proportions of my shape responsible for the idea?"

"I cannot say, nor was I actually thinking of the Serapeum."

"You are not yourself. You have been studying the war news or else you have passed a piebald horse without spitting twice and crossing your fingers."

Paul laughed, but not in the frank boyish way that was so good to hear. "I am not myself, Thessaly, or if I am I do not recognise myself."

"You have committed some indiscretion such as presenting your siren-haired protegee, Flamby Duveen, to your wife."

"I have not," said Paul sharply.

"I am glad. He who presents one pretty woman to another makes two lifelong enemies."

"I did not know that you had met Flamby."

"She has been described to me and she sounds dangerous. I distrust curly-haired girls. They are full of electricity, and electricity is a force of which we know so little. Does the idea of a cocktail appeal to you? I have a man who has invented a new cocktail which he calls 'Fra Diavolo.' Viewed through the eyes of Fra Diavolo you will find the world a more cheery globe."

"Thanks, no. But I will smoke." From his coat pocket Paul took out a briar pipe and the well-worn pouch. "In a month, Thessaly, The Key will be in the printer's hands. I found myself thinking of Pandora this morning. There are few really virtuous women and truth is a draught almost as heady I should imagine as Fra Diavolo."

"My dear Mario, you must admit that virtue is the least picturesque of the vices. When aggressive it becomes a positive disfigurement. The 'on guard' position, though useful in bayonet-fighting, leaves the aesthete cold. You would not have us treat our women as the Moslems do?"

"Women can rarely distinguish the boundary between freedom and license. Honestly I should like to revise the position of woman in Europe and America before I entrusted The Key to her keeping. Unmarried, she has quite enough freedom, married she has too much."

"Therefore she conceals her age and dyes her hair."

"Showing that she is not invulnerable to flattery."

"No woman is, and flattery may be likened to the artillery preparation which precedes a serious advance. But, my dear Mario, to deprive a woman of admiration is to deprive a fish of water. In London when a woman ceases to interest other men she ceases to interest her husband, unless he is not as other men. In Stambul on the contrary the odalisque who bathes in rival glances finally bathes in the Bosphorus with her charming head in a sack. Fortunately we are at war with Turkey."

"Have you considered, Thessaly, what appalling sins must have been committed by the present generation of women in some past phase of existence?"

"There are instances in which the sins belong to the present phase. But I agree with you that the women are suffering more than the men. Therefore their past errors must have been greater. They are being taught the value of love, Mario. In their next incarnation they will remember. They will be reborn beneath a new star—your star. Something perturbs you. You are harassed by doubts and hunted by misgivings. I have secured permission to toil up hundreds of stairs in order that I may emulate the priests of Bel and look out upon the roofs of Babylon. This spectacle will cheer you. Join me, my friend, and I will show you the heart of the world."

IX

"Look," said Jules Thessaly, "below you stretches the Capital of the greatest empire man has ever known."

They stood in the topmost gallery of the campanile looking down upon a miniature London. The viridescent ribbon of the Thames bound bridge to bridge running thematically through a symphony of grey and green and gold. A consciousness of power leapt high within Paul. Only the sun was above him, the sun and the suave immensity of space. How insignificant an episode was a human life, how futile and inept; a tiny note in a monstrous score. Below in the teeming streets moved a million such points, each one but a single note in this vast orchestration, a bird note, faint, inaudible 'mid the music of the spheres. Yet each to each was the centre of the Universe; all symbolised the triumph to the false Self-centre as opposed to the true God-centre. Men lived for the day because they doubted the morrow. Palaces and hovels, churches and theatres, all were products of this feverish striving of the ants to plumb the well of truth and scale the mountain of wisdom; to drain at a draught the gourd of life which the gods had filled in the world's morning. Thessaly began to speak again, standing at Paul's elbow, and his deep rich voice carried power and authority.

"Look at London and you look at an epitome of humanity. The best that man can do, and the worst, lie there beneath you. In that squat, grey, irregular mound which from earth level we recognise to be the Houses of Parliament, men are making laws. The laws which they are making are the laws of necessity—the necessity of slaying Prussians. Many of the larger buildings in the neighbourhood are occupied by temporary civil servants engaged in promulgating those laws. Thus by the passing of an Act having twenty clauses, twenty thousand clerks are created and five more hotels sequestered for their accommodation. No laws which do not bear directly or indirectly upon the slaying of Prussians have been made in recent years. This is sometimes called government, but used to be known as self-preservation when men dressed in yellow ochre and carried stone clubs.

"Eastward over the Thames hangs a pall of smoke. It is the smoke of Silvertown. Left, right, and all about are other palls. They are created by the furnaces of works which once were making useful things and beautiful things; paints and enamels and varnishes, pottery and metal ware, toys for sport and instruments of science. To-day they make instruments of death; high explosives to shatter flesh and bone to pulp and powder, deadly gases to sear men's eyes, to choke out human life. It is called work of national importance, but Christ would have wept to see it. Squatting in Whitehall—look, the setting sun strikes venomous sparks from its windows—is the War Office. Ponder well the name of this imposing pile—the War Office. Nearly two thousand years have elapsed since the last of the Initiates delivered His Sermon on the Mount. See! the city bristles with the spires of His churches; they are as thorns upon a briar-bush. Look north, the spire of a church terminates the prospect; south, it is the same; east and west—spires, spires, spires. And squatting grimly amid a thousand shrines of Jesus Christ is the War Office—the War Office, my friend. Watch how the spears of light strike redly into that canopy of foulness hanging above Kynoch's Works. A Ministry of Munitions controls all that poisonous activity. Mario, it is the second Crucifixion. The Jews crucified the Body; all the world has conspired to crucify the Spirit.

"The Word has failed. There lies the reading of your day dream, Mario, your dream of the Sheikh of El Wasr. Look how the shadow of the campanile creeps out beneath us, over church and War-Office-Annexe, over life and over death. Religion is a corpse and the world is its morgue. But out of corruption comes forth sweetness. No creature known to man possesses more intense vitality than the dermestes beetle which propagates in the skull of a mummy. From the ashes of the Cross you arise. Christ is dead; long live Christianity. Behold the world at your feet. Courage, my friend, open the Gates and lead mankind into the garden of the gods."

X

That Paul had established a platform strong enough to support the tower of a new gospel became evident. His second book of Revelations, The Key, was awaited eagerly by the whole of the civilised world. In determined opposition to the wishes of Bassett, unmoved by an offer from an American newspaper which would have created a record serial price, Paul had declined to print any part of The Key in a periodical. With the publication of The Gates, which but heralded a wider intent, he had become the central figure of the world. Politically he was regarded as a revolutionary so dangerous that he merited the highest respect, and the tactful attitude of the Roman Church was adopted by those temporal rulers who recognised in Paul Mario one who had almost grasped a power above the power of kings.

"In Galileo's days," said Thessaly on one occasion, "a man who proclaimed unpalatable truths was loaded with chains and hurled into a dungeon. Nowadays we load him with honours and raise him to the peerage, an even more effectual method of gagging him. Try to avoid the House of Peers, Mario. Your presence would disturb the orthodox slumbers of the bishops."

On the eve of the opening of the German offensive Paul received a long letter from Don which disturbed him very much. It was the outcome of Don's last interview with Flamby and represented the result of long deliberation. "I have had a sort of brain-wave," wrote Don in his whimsical fashion, "or rush of intellect to the brow. I suppose you recognise that you are now the outstanding figure of the War and consequently of the world? Such a figure always arises out of a great upheaval, as history shows. His presence is necessary to the readjustment of shattered things, I suppose—and he duly arrives. I take you to stand, Paul, for spiritual survival. You are the chosen retort of the White to the challenge of the Black, but I wonder if you have perceived the real inwardness of your own explanation of the War?

"You show it to be an upcrop of that primitive Evil which legend has embodied in the person of Lucifer. Has it occurred to you that the insidious process of corruption which you have followed step by step through the art, the music, the literature, the religion and the sociology of Germany may have been directed by someone? If you are the mouthpiece of the White, who is the mouthpiece of the Black? It is difficult to visualise such a personality, of course. We cannot imagine Pythagoras in his bath or even Shakespeare having his hair cut, and if What's-his-name revisited earth to-morrow I don't suppose anybody would know him. I often find it hard to realise that you, the old Paul with the foul briar pipe and the threadbare Norfolk, really wrote The Gates, not to mention Francesca. But you did, and I have been wondering if the Other Fellow—the Field-Marshal of the Powers of Darkness—is equally disappointing to look at—I mean, without halos, or, in his case, blue fire. In short, I have been wondering if, meeting him, one would recognise him? I have tried to imagine a sort of sinister Whisperer standing at the elbows of Germany's philosophers, scientists, artists and men of letters; one who was paving the way for a war that should lay religion in ashes. And now, Paul, forgive me if I seem to rave, but conditions here are not conducive to the production of really good literature—I wonder if you will divine where this line of reflection led me? The Whisperer, upon the ruins of the old creeds, would try to uprear a new creed—his own. You would be his obstacle. Would he attack you openly, or would he remain—the Whisperer? To adopt the delightful mediaeval language of the Salvation Army, watch for the Devil at your elbow.... I wish I could get home, if only for a day, not because I funk the crash which is coming at any moment now but because I should like to see The Key before, it goes to press...."

Paul read this strange letter many times. "The Whisperer ... would try to uprear a new creed—his own." Paul glanced at a bulky typescript which lay upon the table near his hand. The Key was complete and he had intended to deliver it in person to Bassett later the same morning. Strange doubts and wild surmises began to beat upon his brain and he shrank within himself, contemplative and somewhat fearful. A consciousness of great age crept over him like a shadow. He seemed to have known all things and to have wearied of all things, to have experienced everything and to have found everything to be nothing. Long, long ago he had striven as he was striving now to plant an orchard in the desert of life that men might find rest and refreshment on their journey through pathless time. Long, long ago he had doubted and feared—and failed. In some dim grove of the past he had revealed the secret of eternal rebirth to white-robed philosophers; in some vague sorrow that reached out of the ages and touched his heart he seemed to recognise that death had been his reward, and that he had welcomed death as a friend.

So completely did this mood absorb him that he started nervously to find Jules Thessaly standing beside his chair. Thessaly had walked in from the garden and he carried a flat-crowned black felt hat in his hand.

"If I have intruded upon a rich vein of reflection forgive me."

Paul turned and looked at the strong massive figure outlined against the bright panel of the open window. The influence of that mood of age lingered; he felt lonely and apprehensive. He noticed a number of empty flower vases about the room. Yvonne used to keep them always freshly filled. He wondered when she had ceased to do so and why. "You have rescued me from a mood that was almost suicidal, Thessaly. A horrible recognition of the futility of striving oppresses me this morning. I seem to be awaiting a blow which I know myself powerless to avert. If we were at your place I should prescribe a double 'Fra Diavolo' but, failing this, I think something with a fizz in it must suffice. Will you give the treatment a trial?"

"With pleasure. Let it be a stirrup-cup, or, as our northern friends have it, a doch-an-dorroch."

Paul stood up and stared at Thessaly. "Do I understand you to mean that you are about to set out upon a journey?"

"I am, Mario. Like Eugene Sue's tedious Jew, I am cursed with a lack of repose. I sail for New York to-morrow or the following day."

"Shall you be long absent?"

"I cannot say with any certainty. There seems to be nothing further for me to do in England at present. I feel that England has ceased to be the pivot of the world. I am turning my attention to America, not without sparing a side glance for the island kingdom of the Mikado. You know how unobtrusive I am, Mario; I am taking no letter of introduction to President Wilson, nor if I visit Japan shall I trouble official Tokio. Mine is a lazy life, but not an idle one. I am an enthusiastic onlooker."

Paul gazed at him reproachfully. "You never even warned me of your projected journey, Thessaly. Do you leave all your friends with equally slight regret?"

Thessaly gazed into the peculiar hat, and something in the pose of his head transported Paul to the hills above Lower Charleswood, where, backed by the curtain of a moving storm, he seemed to see Babylon Hall framed in a rainbow which linked the crescent of the hills. "You misjudge me," replied Thessaly. "What I have said is true, but I go in response to a sudden and unforeseen summons. Death and a frail woman have tricked me, and at one stroke have undone all that I had done. I am compelled to go."

Paul detected in the deep voice a note of pathos, of defeat. "I am sorry," he said simply. "I value your friendship."

"Friendship, Mario, is heaven's choicest gift. The love of woman is sometimes wonderful, but it always rests upon a physical basis. The love of a friend is the loftiest sentiment of which man is capable. Its only parallel is the unselfish devotion of a dog to his master."

A servant came in with the refreshments which Paul had ordered. Directly she had departed Thessaly began speaking again. "I have lived in Germany, Mario, and in my younger student days—for I am perhaps an older man than you imagine me to be—I have met those philosophers, or some of them, to whom Germany owes a debt of hatred which cannot be repaid even unto the third and fourth generation. I have lived in France, and in many a sunset I have seen the blood that would drench her fairest pastures. I have watched the coming of the storm, and I saw it break upon the rocks of these inviolable islands. I thought that I knew its portent; I thought that I had discerned the inner meaning of the Day. Mario, I was wrong. Humanity has proved too obstinate."

He spoke with a suppressed vehemence that was startling. "The point of this escapes me," said Paul, watching him. "For what or for whom has humanity proved too obstinate?"

"For us, Mario—for us. There is many an ancient knot to be untied before man can be free to think unfettered. The myth, Imperialism, alone is an iron barrier to universal brotherhood. Not even in the spectacle of the Germanic peoples pouring out their blood in pursuit of that shadow has the rest of the world perceived a lesson. A colony is like a married son with whose domestic arrangements his father persists in interfering. The jewels in an imperial crown mean nothing even to the wearer of that crown, except additional headache. But attack the blood-stained legend of Imperialism and you attack Patriotism, its ferocious parent. Humanity has grown larger since the wolf suckled Romulus, but no wiser, and strong wine is not for weak intellects."

He laid his hand upon the typed pages of The Key. "Is our friendship staunch enough to sustain the shock of real candour, Mario?"

Paul was deeply and unaccountably moved by something in Thessaly's manner. "I trust so," he replied.

"Then—forgive me—burn The Key. It is not yet too late."

"Thessaly! You offer me this counsel! Do you realise what it means to me?"

"Some day, Mario, you may comprehend all that it meant to me."

Paul stared at him truly dumfounded. "What can have happened thus suddenly to divert the current of your life and the tenor of your philosophy?"

"The inevitable, against which we fight in vain."

"And your advice—that I burn The Key—is given sincerely?"

"It is."

"I cannot realise that you mean it, Thessaly. I cannot realise that you are going."

"I am sorry, Mario. In these troublous days a cloud of misgiving hangs over every parting, since au revoir may mean good-bye. But I must go, following the precept of that wise man who said, 'Live unobserved, and if that cannot be, slip unobserved from life.'"

* * * * *

An hour later Paul was about to leave the house when a telegram was brought to him. He experienced great difficulty in grasping its purport. He could not make out from whom it came, and it seemed at first to be without meaning....

"Regret to inform you Captain Donald H. Courtier,—Coy., Irish Guards, killed in action...."

XI

On the following day a phenomenal storm burst upon London out of a blue sky. Tropical rain beat down into the heated streets and thunder roared in Titan anger. Paul came out of the War Office and stood on the steps for some moments watching a rivulet surging along the edge of the pavement.... "I am sorry, Mario, but it was mercifully swift, and his end was glorious. Ireland has disappointed some of us, but fellows like Courtier and those who went with him make one think...."

Paul walked out into the lashing rain, going in the direction of Charing Cross. He was thinking of another storm which had struck swiftly out of a fair sky, of the aisles of the hills, and of one that he had met there. To-day Jules Thessaly was leaving England. Don was dead. Some who knew Paul and who saw him driving on through the downpour as if fury-ridden or sped by some great urgency, wondered and later remembered. But to him London was empty, and heedless of the curiosity of men and the tumult of the elements he pressed on. Nothing penetrated to his consciousness save the eternal repetition of his own name and the name of his book. Evidences of his influence seemed to leer at him from window and hoarding. A performance of the French symphony, Dawn, was advertised to take place at the Queen's Hall, and he found one bill announcing an exhibition of pictures by an ultra-modern Belgian—pictures which their painter declared to be "illustrations" of The Gates. And in his pocket were the papers deposited with Nevin to be given to Paul only in the event of Don's death. Paul had read them, and whilst he longed with a passionate longing to go to Flamby, he knew that to-day he dared not trust himself within sight of the clear grey eyes, of the alluring lips, within touch of the red-brown hair. But he recognised that he must go ultimately, and so he drove on through the storm and right and left of him were traces of his mark upon the world.

* * * * *

Tropical heat prevailed throughout the following day and Paul spent the morning pacing up and down his study. Yvonne was in Brighton. Paul long since had realised that the sympathy between them was imperfect, but always he had counted upon re-establishing the old complete comradeship when his great task should be at last concluded. This morning he had learned the truth, that Yvonne was with Orlando James, but his brain was still too numb fully to appreciate it. Towards noon he sat down at his writing-table and began to read with close attention the typed pages of The Key. Bassett was becoming anxious and had rung up more than once during the morning. Arrangements had been made to publish simultaneously in the principal capitals of the world, and the publishers had been busy for several months accumulating paper to meet the unparalleled demand for this vast first edition.... Eustace knocked three times at the study door to announce that luncheon was served, but Paul continued his reading. During the afternoon he caused a fire to be lighted in the study grate.

It was late evening before he left the house, and he set out with no conscious objective in view, yet subconsciously he was already come to his journey's end. His ideas were chaotic, and he seemed to be spiritually adrift. That his book was indeed the Key he was unable to doubt. He had truly grasped the stupendous truth underlying that manifestation called life, but seeking to discern retrospectively the path whereby he had pierced to the heart of the labyrinth he found confusion and stood dismayed before the dazzling jewel which he had unearthed. The past intruded subtly upon him, and he was all but swept away by sorrowful memories of Don. He saw him coming along the Pilgrim's Way and heard his cheery greeting as he stepped upon the terrace of Hatton Towers.

Where that night's wandering led him he knew not, but there were those who saw him passing along Limehouse Causeway as if in quest of the Chinese den where once he and Thessaly had watched men smoke opium, and others who spoke to him, but without receiving acknowledgment, in the neighbourhood of Westminster Cathedral. He appeared, too, at the Cafe Royal, standing just within the doorway and looking from table to table as one who seeks a friend, but went out again without addressing a word to anyone. At a late hour he saw a light shining from a casement window and mechanically he pressed the knob of a bell above which appeared the number 23. Flamby opened the door and Paul stood looking at her in the dusk.

XII

"Oh," said Flamby, "I had given you up."

She wore a blue and white kimono and had little embroidered Oriental slippers on her feet. Under the light of the silk-shaded lamp her hair gleamed wonderfully. She had matured since that day in Bluebell Hollow, when Paul and Don had first seen her. The world had not hardened her and the curves of her face were almost childlike, yet there was something gone from her eyes and something new come to replace it. Resourcefulness was there, but no hint of boldness and her moods of timidity were exquisite. Now, having naively confessed her dreams, her sudden confusion was lovable.

"I scarcely know," declared Paul. "I scarcely know why I have come at such an hour. It is not fair to you, and it is not practising what I preach."

"Please come in. You are welcome at any time, and as nobody will see you there can be no harm done."

Paul entered and stood looking vaguely at the parcel which he carried. It contained the manuscript of The Key. Thus reminded of its presence he found himself wondering why since he had forgotten that he carried it, he had not absently left it behind somewhere during his aimless wanderings. He laid it with his hat on the open bureau. The little apartment had assumed very marked individuality. Many delightful sketches and water-colour drawings ornamented the walls and a delicate pastel study of Dovelands Cottage hung above the famous clock on the mantelpiece. Paul crossed and examined this picture closely.

"Who is living in Dovelands Cottage now, Flamby?" he asked. "I believe Nevin told me that it had been sold."

Flamby turned aside to take up a box of cigarettes.

"Don bought it," she said slowly. "I don't know why he didn't want you to know, but he asked me not to tell you."

Paul continued to stare at the picture, until Flamby spoke again. "Will you have a cigarette?" she asked, her voice low and monotonous.

"No, thank you very much."

"I can make coffee in a minute."

"Please don't think of it."

Through the little mirror immediately below the pastel Flamby studied Paul covertly. He had aged; all the beauty of his face resided now in his eyes. Two years had changed him from a young and handsome man to one whose youth is left behind, and who from the height of life's pilgrimage looks down sadly but unfalteringly into a valley of shadows. He turned to her.

"Mrs. Chumley?"

"I was with her this morning. She is staying for a while at the cottage. I think she is nearly broken-hearted. From the time that his mother died, when Don was very little, Mrs. Chumley looked after him until he went away to school. You know, don't you? But she is so brave. I wish," said Flamby, her voice sunken almost to a whisper, "I wish I could be as brave ..." She sat down on the settee, biting her lower lip and striving hard to retain composure.

"You are very brave indeed, and very loyal," answered Paul, but he did not approach her where she sat. "You have taught me that there are women as far above pettiness and spitefulness as every man should be, but as every man is not."

"I wasn't like it before I knew Mrs. Chumley and—Don."

"You were always true to yourself, and there is no higher creed. Flamby, I have received some papers which Don left with Nevin to be delivered to me. You thought me so mean and lowly, so ignorant and so vainglorious that I could judge a girl worthy of Don's love to be unworthy of my friendship. You were right. No! please don't speak—yet You were right, but you suffered in silence, and you did not hate me. I don't ask you to forgive me, I only thank you very, very sincerely."

Flamby held a handkerchief tightly between her teeth, and stared fixedly at a photograph of one of her propaganda pictures which hung on the wall to the right of the bedroom door.

"There on your bureau," continued Paul, "lies my second book. It contains the key to mysteries which have baffled men since the world began. I do not say it with vanity; vanity is dead within me. I say it with fear, for I did not unravel those mysteries; I did not write that book."

"Oh," whispered Flamby.

"Yes—again you saw clearly, little wonder-girl. Don has told me how you traced the black thread running through the woof of The Gates, and that black thread was truth. It is truth that slays and truth that damns. Not for a million ages can men be sufficiently advanced to know and to live. Hypocrisy triumphs; for the few is the fruit of knowledge—for the multitude, the husk. I have seen the Light of the World, but I stand in the shadow. Yet from the bottom of my heart I thank God that at the price of happiness I have bought escape from a sin more deadly than that which any man has committed. Only by renouncing the world may we win the world. This is the lesson of Golgotha. Behind the curtain of the War move forces of incalculable evil which first found expression in Germany to-day as they found expression there in the Middle Ages. It was in a Rhine monastery that the first Black Mass was sung. It was in a Rhine town that Lucifer opened his new campaign against mankind; it was in German soil that he planted his seed. Flamby, I tell you that the Hohenzollerns are a haunted race, ruling a haunted land, doomed and cursed. About them are obscene spirits wearing the semblance of men—of men gross and heavy, and leaden-eyed; and upon each brow is the mark of the Bull, the sigil of Hell."

Flamby watched him, listening spellbound to his strange words. He was inspired; anger and sorrow drove him remorselessly on and a chill finger seemed to touch Flamby's heart as she listened; for resignation and finality informed his speech.

"Each human soul must fight its way out of the night of the valley, Flamby, before it can pass the gates of dawn. Each error is a step in the path and there are steps right to the top. To me it was given to see but not to understand until this very hour. What I have done it was ordained that I should do; what I was about to do God forbade." He paused, glancing at Flamby and quickly away again. "Don's letter has opened my eyes, which were blinded. I shall not ask you for what purpose you risked so much to visit the studio of Orlando James. I know. Your fire is laid, Flamby; may I light it?"

"Of course, if you wish."

Paul stooped and held a match to the paper, watching the tongues of flame licking the dry wood; and ere long a small fire was crackling in the grate. He turned to Flamby, pointing to the parcel which lay upon the bureau. "The purpose with which I set out recurs to me," he said. "I have destroyed all the typed copies and every note. It is my wish that you shall destroy the manuscript."

"Of The Key?" she whispered.

"Please."

"But—are you sure?"

"Quite sure."

Flamby met his set gaze and unwrapping the manuscript she approached the fire. Paul stood aside, resting his elbow upon a corner of the mantelshelf. Flamby's hands were very unsteady.

"Tear out the pages," said Paul, "and throw them loosely on the flames. They will burn more readily."

Flamby obeyed him, and page by page began to destroy the book containing truths which were known in the sanctuaries of Memphis but which the world was yet too young to understand. Excepting the voice of the flames there was no sound in the room until Flamby had laid the last page upon the pyre, when she sank upon her knees and hid her face in her hands. Her hair rippled down and veiled her redly.

Paul watched her for a while and then, irresistibly, inevitably, he was drawn down beside her; his arm crept around the bowed shoulders and he pressed his cheek against fragrant curls. "Flamby," he said, "dear little wild-haired Flamby. The sorrow of the world has claimed us both. Let us both be brave—and true." And although he would have bartered many things once accounted of price for the right to crush her in his arms he rose to his feet again and moved away to the corner of the mantelshelf, for the nearness and the touch of her intoxicated him. Flamby did not stir. The mound of ashes settled lower in the grate. Paul took up his hat and walked to the door.

"Good night, Flamby," he said. "Wait for me. I shall be waiting for you."

The door closed and Flamby heard footsteps retreating along the gallery. As the sound became inaudible, a maroon burst dully at no great distance away. Flamby leapt to her feet. Her eyes were wild as she stood there, hands clenched tightly, and listened. A second maroon gave warning of the approaching air raiders. Flamby ran to the door, threw it open and sprang out into the brilliant moonlight as police whistles began to skirl in the distance. The slender chain about her neck parted unaccountably and unperceived by Flamby her locket fell at her feet.

"Paul!" she cried. "Paul! come back—come back!"

But only an echo which dwelt in the arch of the entrance answered her, saying sadly: "Paul ... Paul ..."

* * * * *

Heedless of those who urged him to take cover, of the flat shrieking of whistles and later of the roar of the barrage, Paul walked on under the stars of a perfect night and above him droned the Gotha engines. He prayed silently.

"Master of Destiny, all-Merciful God, suffer me to die that I may be reborn a wiser and a better man. Of Thine infinite mercy guide the steps of Yvonne who was my wife. Grant her the happiness for which she sought and which I denied her. To those who wait give faith and fortitude: to me, O God, give death. Amen."

A bomb fell shrieking through the air and burst with a rumbling monstrous peal, digging a pit, a smoking grave, on the spot where Paul had stood. His body was scattered like flock by the wind; his spirit was drawn into the ceaseless Loom.

OM MANI PADME HUM.

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT THE NORTHUMBERLAND PRESS, THORNTON STREET, NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE

THE END