And there was no religion but one that claimed the equal rights of universal jurisdiction—­and that the Catholic.  The sects of the East, while each retained characteristics of its own, had yet found in the New Man the incarnation of their ideals, and had therefore given in their allegiance to the authority of the whole Body of whom He was Head.  But the very essence of the Catholic Religion was treason to the very idea of man.  Christians directed their homage to a supposed supernatural Being who was not only—­so they claimed—­outside of the world but positively transcended it.  Christians, then—­leaving aside the mad fable of the Incarnation, which might very well be suffered to die of its own folly—­deliberately severed themselves from that Body of which by human generation they had been made members.  They were as mortified limbs yielding themselves to the domination of an outside force other than that which was their only life, and by that very act imperilled the entire Body.  This madness, then, was the one crime which still deserved the name.  Murder, theft, rape, even anarchy itself, were as trifling faults compared to this monstrous sin, for while these injured indeed the Body they did not strike at its heart—­individuals suffered, and therefore those minor criminals deserved restraint; but the very Life was not struck at.  But in Christianity there was a poison actually deadly.  Every cell that became infected with it was infected in that very fibre that bound it to the spring of life.  This, and this alone, was the supreme crime of High Treason against man—­and nothing but complete removal from the world could be an adequate remedy.

These, then, were the main arguments addressed to that section of the world which still recoiled from the deliberate utterance of Felsenburgh, and their success had been remarkable.  Of course, the logic, in itself indisputable, had been dressed in a variety of costumes gilded with rhetoric, flushed with passion, and it had done its work in such a manner that as summer drew on Felsenburgh had announced privately that he proposed to introduce a bill which should carry out to its logical conclusion the policy of which he had spoken.

Now, this too, had been accomplished.

II

Oliver let himself into his house, and went straight upstairs to Mabel’s room.  It would not do to let her hear the news from any but his own lips.  She was not there, and on inquiry he heard that she had gone out an hour before.

He was disconcerted at this.  The decree had been signed half-an-hour earlier, and in answer to an inquiry from Lord Pemberton it had been stated that there was no longer any reason for secrecy, and that the decision might be communicated to the press.  Oliver had hurried away immediately in order to make sure that Mabel should hear the news from him, and now she was out, and at any moment the placards might tell her of what had been done.