, voices, music, perfumes,
calling upon him to return, but he forced his way through a passage,
stifling, low and laden with the breath of remote mortality like those
in the depths of Egypt's pyramids. He came forth into a vast cathedral
and stood before the high altar. As the acolyte swung the thurible and
incense floated upward to the Cross, he, too, arose seraphic and
alighted upon the very top of the dome. Below him stretched a maze of
tortuous streets, thronged with men and women of a thousand ages and of
all the races of mankind. Minaret, pagoda, dome, propylon, arch, portico
jutted up from the labyrinth like tares amid a cornfield. Then a mist
crept darkly down and drew its mantle over them all. A golden crescent
projected above the haze, but it was swallowed up; a slender spire for
long remained but finally was lost. He looked down at the basilica upon
which he stood. It had vanished. He raised his eyes, and the mist was
gone, but an empty world lay where a teeming world had been; a desert
wherein no living thing stirred. A voice, a familiar voice, spoke, and
the words were familiar, too. They melted into the sweet melancholy of
the _Lament for Adonis_, and he awoke, dazzled, half blinded by the
brilliancy of the moonlight.

PART THIRD

THE KEY

I

Paul's book, _The Gates_, was published in the spring. Answering, as it
did, if not completely, the question upon the solution of which the
course of so many human lives depended, it was received as great works
were received in the Arcadian days of Victorian literature. It silenced
Paul's contemporaries as thunder silences a human orchestra. Only two
critics retained sufficient composure to be flippant. No living man
commanded so vast an audience as Paul Mario, and now his voice spoke in
a new tone. To some it came as a balm, to some it brought disquiet; in
each and everyone it wrought a change of outlook. Following a period of
strife wherein all save brute force seemed to have perished, it
vindicated the claims of him who said that the pen was mightier than the
sword. Copies found their way to Berlin but were confiscated by the
police. A Vienna firm printed an edition and their premises were raided
by the authorities. To the meanest intelligence it was apparent that one
had arisen who had something new to say--or something so old that the
world had forgotten it. By means of sacrificing half of his usual
royalty Paul had contrived that _The Gates_ should