ed by the great dome growing every
instant. Around, above and beneath, his eyes were conscious of wide
air-spaces, overhead deepening into lapis-lazuli down to horizons of
pale turquoise. The only sound, of which he had long ceased to be
directly conscious, was that of the steady rush of air, less shrill now
as the speed began to drop down--down--to forty miles an hour. There was
a clang of a bell, and immediately he was aware of a sense of faint
sickness as the car dropped in a glorious swoop, and he staggered a
little as he grasped his rugs together. When he looked again the motion
seemed to have ceased; he could see towers ahead, a line of house-roofs,
and beneath he caught a glimpse of a road and more roofs with patches of
green between. A bell clanged again, and a long sweet cry followed. On
all sides he could hear the movement of feet; a guard in uniform passed
swiftly along the glazed corridor; again came the faint nausea; and as
he looked up once more from his luggage for an instant he saw the dome,
grey now and lined, almost on a level with his own eyes, huge against
the vivid sky. The world span round for a moment; he shut his eyes, and
when he looked again walls seemed to heave up past him and stop,
swaying. There was the last bell, a faint vibration as the car grounded
in the steel-netted dock; a line of faces rocked and grew still outside
the windows, and Percy passed out towards the doors, carrying his bags.

II

He still felt a sense of insecure motion as he sat alone over coffee an
hour later in one of the remote rooms of the Vatican; but there was a
sense of exhilaration as well, as his tired brain realised where he was.
It had been strange to drive over the rattling stones in the weedy
little cab, such as he remembered ten years ago when he had left Rome,
newly ordained. While the world had moved on, Rome had stood still; she
had other affairs to think of than physical improvements, now that the
spiritual weight of the earth rested entirely upon her shoulders. All
had seemed unchanged--or rather it had reverted to the condition of
nearly one hundred and fifty years ago. Histories related how the
improvements of the Italian government had gradually dropped out of use
as soon as the city, eighty years before, had been given her
independence; the trains ceased to run; volors were not allowed to enter
the walls; the new buildings, permitted to remain, had been converted to
ecclesiastical use; the Quir