ent,
could exert undivided sway. There were spaces when the revolutionary
movement passed clean out of his mind, was drawn aside like a curtain
from before some startling new aspect of the time. Helen had swayed his
mind to this intense earnestness of enquiry, but there came times when
she, even, receded beyond his conscious thoughts. At one moment, for
example, he found they were traversing the religious quarter, for the
easy transit about the city afforded by the moving ways rendered sporadic
churches and chapels no longer necessary--and his attention was vividly
arrested by the facade of one of the Christian sects.

They were travelling seated on one of the swift upper ways, the place
leapt upon them at a bend and advanced rapidly towards them. It was
covered with inscriptions from top to base, in vivid white and blue, save
where a vast and glaring kinematograph transparency presented a realistic
New Testament scene, and where a vast festoon of black to show that the
popular religion followed the popular politics, hung across the
lettering. Graham had already become familiar with the phonotype writing
and these inscriptions arrested him, being to his sense for the most part
almost incredible blasphemy. Among the less offensive were "Salvation on
the First Floor and turn to the Right." "Put your Money on your Maker."
"The Sharpest Conversion in London, Expert Operators! Look Slippy!" "What
Christ would say to the Sleeper;--Join the Up-to-date Saints!" "Be a
Christian--without hindrance to your present Occupation." "All the
Brightest Bishops on the Bench to-night and Prices as Usual." "Brisk
Blessings for Busy Business Men."

"But this is appalling!" said Graham, as that deafening scream of
mercantile piety towered above them.

"What is appalling?" asked his little officer, apparently seeking vainly
for anything unusual in this shrieking enamel.

"_This_! Surely the essence of religion is reverence."

"Oh _that_!" Asano looked at Graham. "Does it shock you?" he said in the
tone of one who makes a discovery. "I suppose it would, of course. I had
forgotten. Nowadays the competition for attention is so keen, and people
simply haven't the leisure to attend to their souls, you know, as they
used to do." He smiled. "In the old days you had quiet Sabbaths and the
countryside. Though somewhere I've read of Sunday afternoons that--"

"But _that_," said Graham, glancing back at the receding blue and white.
"That is surely