l extravaganzas. Following this came a pale moon which
emerged from the north; a second, a third, a fourth, started up from the
points of the compass, and after wabbling in the wind like gigantic
balloons, merged overhead in an indescribable disk which assumed the
features of Michael Angelo's Moses. Here is a new technique, indeed,
thought Gerald; yet he could not detect its moral values.

A golden landscape was projected on land and sea. A central aisle of
waters, paved by the golden rays of a lyric sun high overhead, was
embellished on either side by the marmoreal splendours of stately
palaces. An ilex inclined its graceful head to its liquid image; men
moved the blocks that made famous in the mouth of the world Queen Dido's
Carthage. Clouds of pearl-coloured smoke encircled the enchanting
picture. And the galleys came and went in this symphonic, glittering
spectacle.

"Turner would have died of envy," said Gerald aloud. There was a
remarkable vibration of life, not as he had seen it in mechanical
bioscopes, but the vivid life of earth and sunshine.

The scenes that succeeded were many: episodes from profane and sacred
histories; simulacra of the great saints. A war between giants and
pygmies was shown with all its accompanying horrors. The firmament
dripped crimson. The four cryptic creatures of Ezekiel's vision came out
of the north, a great cloud of "infolding fire" and the colour was
amber. A cyclopean and dazzling staircase thronged by moving angelic
shapes, harping mute harps, stretched from sea to sky, melting into the
milky way like the tail of a starry serpent. Followed the opening of the
dread prophetic seals; but, after an angel had descended from heaven,
his face as the sun and at his feet pillars of fire, the people,
prostrate like stalks of corn beaten by a tempest, worshipped in fear.
These things were supernatural. The heavens were displaying the glory of
God.

Not knowing whether the signs in the skies might be construed as
blasphemous, and lost in fathomless admiration for the marvellous power
of the wizard, Gerald sought to get closer to Karospina and Mila. But
wedged in by uniformed men, and the darkness thick as an Egyptian
plague, he despairingly awaited the apotheosis. His eyes were sated by
the miracles of harmonies--noiseless harmonies. It _was_ a new art, and
one for the peoples of the earth. Never had the hues of the universe
been so assembled, grouped, and modulated. And the human eye,