hall seemed to grow vaster and vaster, the disputing, infuriated
figures multiplied to an innumerable assembly, they drove about like
snowflakes in a gale, they whirled in argumentative couples, they spun
in eddies of contradiction, they made extraordinary patterns, and then
amidst the cloudy darkness of the unfathomable dome above them there
appeared and increased a radiant triangle in which shone an eye. The eye
and the triangle filled the heavens, sent out flickering rays, glowed
to a blinding incandescence, seemed to be speaking words of thunder
that were nevertheless inaudible. It was as if that thunder filled the
heavens, it was as if it were nothing but the beating artery in the
sleeper's ear. The attention strained to hear and comprehend, and on the
very verge of comprehension snapped like a fiddle-string.

"Nicoea!"

The word remained like a little ash after a flare.

The sleeper had awakened and lay very still, oppressed by a sense of
intellectual effort that had survived the dream in which it had arisen.
Was it so that things had happened? The slumber-shadowed mind, moving
obscurely, could not determine whether it was so or not. Had they indeed
behaved in this manner when the great mystery was established? Who
said they stopped their ears with their fingers and fled, shouting with
horror? Shouting? Was it Eusebius or Athanasius? Or Sozomen.... Some
letter or apology by Athanasius?... And surely it was impossible that
the Trinity could have appeared visibly as a triangle and an eye. Above
such an assembly.

That was mere dreaming, of course. Was it dreaming after Raphael? After
Raphael? The drowsy mind wandered into a side issue. Was the picture
that had suggested this dream the one in the Vatican where all the
Fathers of the Church are shown disputing together? But there surely God
and the Son themselves were painted with a symbol--some symbol--also?
But was that disputation about the Trinity at all? Wasn't it rather
about a chalice and a dove? Of course it was a chalice and a dove! Then
where did one see the triangle and the eye? And men disputing? Some such
picture there was....

What a lot of disputing there had been! What endless disputing! Which
had gone on. Until last night. When this very disagreeable young man
with the hawk nose and the pointing finger had tackled one when one was
sorely fagged, and disputed; disputed. Rebuked and disputed. "Answer me
this," he had said.... And still one's poor