it would be open as he turned into Ashley Gardens. He
glanced at his watch; it was only just after seven. Perhaps an early Mass
might be beginning. He went to the central doors and found them fast;
then he saw little groups of people and individuals like himself making
for the door in the great tower, and these he followed within.

He stood amazed for a few minutes. The vast soaring space, so austere in
its bare brick, gripped his imagination. The white and red and gold of
the painted Christ that hung so high and monstrous before the entrance to
the marbles of the sanctuary almost troubled him. It dominated everything
so completely that he felt he could not escape it. He sought one of the
many chairs and knelt down.

A little bell tinkled, Peter glanced sideways towards the sound, and
saw that a Mass was in progress in a side-chapel of gleaming mosaics,
and that a soldier in uniform served. Hardly had he taken the details
in, when another bell claimed his attention. It came from across the
wide nave, and he perceived that another chapel had its Mass, and a
considerable congregation. And then, his attention aroused, he began to
spy about and to take in the thing.

The whole vast cathedral was, as it were, alive. Seven or eight Masses
were in progress. One would scarcely finish before another priest,
preceded by soldier in uniform or server in cassock and cotta, would
appear from beyond the great pulpit and make his way to yet another
altar. The small handbells rang out again and again and again, and still
priest after priest was there to take his place. Peter began cautiously
to move about. He became amazed at the size of the congregation. They had
been lost in that great place, but every chapel had its people, and there
were, in reality, hundreds scattered about in the nave alone.

He knelt for awhile and watched the giving of Communion in the guarded
chapel to the north of the high altar. Its gold and emblazoned gates were
not for him, but he could at least kneel and watch those who passed in
and out. They were of all sorts and classes, of all ranks and ages; men,
women, children, old and young, rich and poor, soldier and civilian,
streamed in and out again. Peter sighed and left them. He found an altar
at which Mass was about to begin, and he knelt at the back on a mosaic
pavement in which fishes and strange beasts were set in a marble stream,
and watched. And it was not one Mass that he watched, but two or three,