er which alone had refused to be transformed,
he saw high above him against the heavy illuminated clouds, a long
slender object, glowing with soft light, slide northwards and vanish on
outstretched wings. That musical cry, he told himself, was the voice of
one of the European line of volors announcing its arrival in the capital
of Great Britain.

"Until our Lord comes back," he thought to himself; and for an instant
the old misery stabbed at his heart. How difficult it was to hold the
eyes focussed on that far horizon when this world lay in the foreground
so compelling in its splendour and its strength! Oh, he had argued with
Father Francis an hour ago that size was not the same as greatness, and
that an insistent external could not exclude a subtle internal; and he
had believed what he had then said; but the doubt yet remained till he
silenced it by a fierce effort, crying in his heart to the Poor Man of
Nazareth to keep his heart as the heart of a little child.

Then he set his lips, wondering how long Father Francis would bear the
pressure, and went down the steps.

BOOK I-THE ADVENT

CHAPTER I

I

Oliver Brand, the new member for Croydon (4), sat in his study, looking
out of the window over the top of his typewriter.

His house stood facing northwards at the extreme end of a spur of the
Surrey Hills, now cut and tunnelled out of all recognition; only to a
Communist the view was an inspiriting one. Immediately below the wide
windows the embanked ground fell away rapidly for perhaps a hundred
feet, ending in a high wall, and beyond that the world and works of men
were triumphant as far as eye could see. Two vast tracks like streaked
race-courses, each not less than a quarter of a mile in width, and sunk
twenty feet below the surface of the ground, swept up to a meeting a
mile ahead at the huge junction. Of those, that on his left was the
First Trunk road to Brighton, inscribed in capital letters in the
Railroad Guide, that to the right the Second Trunk to the Tunbridge and
Hastings district. Each was divided length-ways by a cement wall, on one
side of which, on steel rails, ran the electric trams, and on the other
lay the motor-track itself again divided into three, on which ran, first
the Government coaches at a speed of one hundred and fifty miles an
hour, second the private motors at not more than sixty, third the cheap
Government line at thirty, with stations every five miles. This was
further bord