The other, with a little gesture of apology, took out his office book presently, and began to read.

Percy looked at him with an immense envy.  Ah! if only he were as old as that!  He could bear a year or two more of this misery, but not fifty years, he thought.  It was an almost endless vista that (even if things went well) opened before him, of continual strife, self-repression, energy, misrepresentation from his enemies.  The Church was sinking further every day.  What if this new spasm of fervour were no more than the dying flare of faith?  How could he bear that?  He would have to see the tide of atheism rise higher and more triumphant every day; Felsenburgh had given it an impetus of whose end there was no prophesying.  Never before had a single man wielded the full power of democracy.  Then once more he looked forward to the morrow.  Oh! if it could but end in death!... Beati mortui qui in Domino moriuntur! ...

It was no good; it was cowardly to think in this fashion.  After all, God was God—­He takes up the isles as a very little thing.

Percy took out his office book, found Prime and St. Sylvester, signed himself with the cross, and began to pray.  A minute later the two chaplains slipped in once more, and sat down; and all was silent, save for that throb of the screw, and the strange whispering rush of air outside.

III

It was about nineteen o’clock that the ruddy English conductor looked in at the doorway, waking Percy from his doze.

“Dinner will be served in half-an-hour, gentlemen,” he said (speaking Esperanto, as the rule was on international cars).  “We do not stop at Turin to-night.”

He shut the door and went out, and the sound of closing doors came down the corridor as he made the same announcement to each compartment.

There were no passengers to descend at Turin, then, reflected Percy; and no doubt a wireless message had been received that there were none to come on board either.  That was good news:  it would give him more time in London.  It might even enable Cardinal Steinmann to catch an earlier volor from Paris to Berlin; but he was not sure bow they ran.  It was a pity that the German had not been able to catch the thirteen o’clock from Rome to Berlin direct.  So he calculated, in a kind of superficial insensibility.

He stood up presently to stretch himself.  Then he passed out and along the corridor to the lavatory to wash his hands.

He became fascinated by the view as he stood before the basin at the rear of the car, for even now they were passing over Turin.  It was a blur of light, vivid and beautiful, that shone beneath him in the midst of this gulf of darkness, sweeping away southwards into the gloom as the car sped on towards the Alps.  How little, he thought, seemed this great city seen from above; and yet, how mighty it was!  It was from that glimmer, already five miles behind, that Italy was controlled; in one of these dolls’ houses of which he had caught but a glimpse, men sat in council over souls and bodies, and abolished God, and smiled at His Church.  And God allowed it all, and made no sign.  It was there that Felsenburgh bad been, a month or two ago—­Felsenburgh, his double!  And again the mental sword tore and stabbed at his heart.