* * * * *

A few minutes later, the four ecclesiastics were sitting at their round table in a little screened compartment of the dining-room in the bows of the air-ship.  It was an excellent dinner, served, as usual, from the kitchen in the bowels of the volor, and rose, course by course, with a smooth click, into the centre of the table.  There was a bottle of red wine to each diner, and both table and chairs swung easily to the very slight motion of the ship.  But they did not talk much, for there was only one subject possible to the two cardinals, and the chaplains had not yet been admitted into the full secret.

It was growing cold now, and even the hot-air foot-rests did not quite compensate for the deathly iciness of the breath that began to stream down from the Alps, which the ship was now approaching at a slight incline.  It was necessary to rise at least nine thousand feet from the usual level, in order to pass the frontier of the Mont Cenis at a safe angle; and at the same time it was necessary to go a little slower over the Alps themselves, owing to the extreme rarity of the air, and the difficulty in causing the screw to revolve sufficiently quickly to counteract it.

“There will be clouds to-night,” said a voice clear and distinct from the passage, as the door swung slightly to a movement of the car.

Percy got up and closed it.

The German Cardinal began to grow a little fidgety towards the end of dinner.

“I shall go back,” he said at last.  “I shall be better in my fur rug.”

His chaplain dutifully went after him, leaving his own dinner unfinished, and Percy was left alone with Father Corkran, his English chaplain lately from Scotland.

He finished his wine, ate a couple of figs, and then sat staring out through the plate-glass window in front.

“Ah!” he said.  “Excuse me, father.  There are the Alps at last.”

The front of the car consisted of three divisions, in the centre of one of which stood the steersman, his eyes looking straight ahead, and his hands upon the wheel.  On either side of him, separated from him by aluminium walls, was contrived a narrow slip of a compartment, with a long curved window at the height of a man’s eyes, through which a magnificent view could be obtained.  It was to one of these that Percy went, passing along the corridor, and seeing through half-opened doors other parties still over their wine.  He pushed the spring door on the left and went through.

He had crossed the Alps three times before in his life, and well remembered the extraordinary effect they had had on him, especially as he had once seen them from a great altitude upon a clear day—­an eternal, immeasurable sea of white ice, broken by hummocks and wrinkles that from below were soaring peaks named and reverenced; and, beyond, the spherical curve of the earth’s edge that dropped in a haze of air into unutterable space.  But this time they seemed more amazing than ever, and he looked out on them with the interest of a sick child.