“We know nothing,” she said.  “Nothing; nothing!  Where did He learn His languages?”

“It is supposed that He travelled for many years.  But no one knows.  He has said nothing.”

She turned swiftly to her husband.

“But what does it all mean?  What is His power?  Tell me, Oliver?”

He smiled back, shaking his head.

“Well, Markham said that it was his incorruption—­that and his oratory; but that explains nothing.”

“No, it explains nothing,” said the girl.

“It is just personality,” went on Oliver, “at least, that’s the label to use.  But that, too, is only a label.”

“Yes, just a label.  But it is that.  They all felt it in Paul’s House, and in the streets afterwards.  Did you not feel it?”

“Feel it!” cried the man, with shining eyes.  “Why, I would die for Him!”

* * * * *

They went back to the house presently, and it was not till they reached the door that either said a word about the dead old woman who lay upstairs.

“They are with her now,” said Mabel softly.  “I will communicate with the people.”

He nodded gravely.

“It had better be this afternoon,” he said.  “I have a spare hour at fourteen o’clock.  Oh! by the way, Mabel, do you know who took the message to the priest?”

“I think so.”

“Yes, it was Phillips.  I saw him last night.  He will not come here again.”

“Did he confess it?”

“He did.  He was most offensive.”

But Oliver’s face softened again as he nodded to his wife at the foot of the stairs, and turned to go up once more to his mother’s room.

CHAPTER II

I

It seemed to Percy Franklin as he drew near Rome, sliding five hundred feet high through the summer dawn, that he was approaching the very gates of heaven, or, still better, he was as a child coming home.  For what he had left behind him ten hours before in London was not a bad specimen, he thought, of the superior mansions of hell.  It was a world whence God seemed to have withdrawn Himself, leaving it indeed in a state of profound complacency—­a state without hope or faith, but a condition in which, although life continued, there was absent the one essential to well-being.  It was not that there was not expectation—­for London was on tip-toe with excitement.  There were rumours of all kinds:  Felsenburgh was coming back; he was back; he had never gone.  He was to be President of the Council, Prime Minister, Tribune, with full capacities of democratic government and personal sacro-sanctity, even King—­if not Emperor of the West.  The entire constitution was to be remodelled, there was to be a complete rearrangement of the pieces; crime was to be abolished by the mysterious power that had killed war; there was to be free food—­the secret of life was discovered, there was to be no more death—­so the rumours ran....  Yet that was lacking, to the priest’s mind, which made life worth living....