say that the flames had set the fog on fire.  Beside the ship and beneath it (for it swung just under the ball), the immeasurable dome itself shot out and down into the dark like a combination of voiceless cataracts.  Or it was like some cyclopean sea-beast sitting above London and letting down its tentacles bewilderingly on every side, a monstrosity in that starless heaven.  For the clouds that belonged to London had closed over the heads of the voyagers sealing up the entrance of the upper air.  They had broken through a roof and come into a temple of twilight.

They were so near to the ball that Lucifer leaned his hand against it, holding the vessel away, as men push a boat off from a bank.  Above it the cross already draped in the dark mists of the borderland was shadowy and more awful in shape and size.

Professor Lucifer slapped his hand twice upon the surface of the great orb as if he were caressing some enormous animal.  “This is the fellow,” he said, “this is the one for my money.”

“May I with all respect inquire,” asked the old monk, “what on earth you are talking about?”

“Why this,” cried Lucifer, smiting the ball again, “here is the only symbol, my boy.  So fat.  So satisfied.  Not like that scraggy individual, stretching his arms in stark weariness.”  And he pointed up to the cross, his face dark with a grin.  “I was telling you just now, Michael, that I can prove the best part of the rationalist case and the Christian humbug from any symbol you liked to give me, from any instance I came across.  Here is an instance with a vengeance.  What could possibly express your philosophy and my philosophy better than the shape of that cross and the shape of this ball?  This globe is reasonable; that cross is unreasonable.  It is a four-legged animal, with one leg longer than the others.  The globe is inevitable.  The cross is arbitrary.  Above all the globe is at unity with itself; the cross is primarily and above all things at enmity with itself.  The cross is the conflict of two hostile lines, of irreconcilable direction.  That silent thing up there is essentially a collision, a crash, a struggle in stone.  Pah! that sacred symbol of yours has actually given its name to a description of desperation and muddle.  When we speak of men at once ignorant of each other and frustrated by each other, we say they are at cross-purposes.  Away with the thing!  The very shape of it is a contradiction in terms.”

“What you say is perfectly true,” said Michael, with serenity.  “But we like contradictions in terms.  Man is a contradiction in terms; he is a beast whose superiority to other beasts consists in having fallen.  That cross is, as you say, an eternal collision; so am I. That is a struggle in stone.  Every form of life is a struggle in flesh.  The shape of the cross is irrational, just as the shape of the human animal is irrational.  You say the cross is a quadruped with one limb longer than the rest.  I say man is a quadruped who only uses two of his legs.”