owledge that this was the way in which the Spirit
of Peace asserted its superiority, up to that last moment when, in her
husband's arms, she had learned of the Fall of Rome, it had appeared to
her as if her new world had suddenly corrupted about her. It was
incredible, she told herself, that this ravening monster, dripping blood
from claws and teeth, that had arisen roaring in the night, could be the
Humanity that had become her God. She had thought revenge and cruelty
and slaughter to be the brood of Christian superstition, dead and buried
under the new-born angel of light, and now it seemed that the monsters
yet stirred and lived. All the evening she had sat, walked, lain about
her quiet house with the horror heavy about her, flinging open a window
now and again in the icy air to listen with clenched hands to the cries
and the roarings of the mob that raged in the streets beneath, the
clanks, the yells and the hoots of the motor-trains that tore up from
the country to swell the frenzy of the city--to watch the red glow of
fire, the volumes of smoke that heaved up from the burning chapels and
convents.

She had questioned, doubted, resisted her doubts, flung out frantic acts
of faith, attempted to renew the confidence that she attained in her
meditation, told herself that traditions died slowly; she had knelt,
crying out to the spirit of peace that lay, as she knew so well, at the
heart of man, though overwhelmed for the moment by evil passion. A line
or two ran in her head from one of the old Victorian poets:

You doubt If any one Could think or bid it? How could it come about?...
Who did it? Not men! Not here! Oh! not beneath the sun.... The torch
that smouldered till the cup o'er-ran The wrath of God which is the
wrath of Man!

She had even contemplated death, as she had told her husband--the taking
of her own life, in a great despair with the world. Seriously she had
thought of it; it was an escape perfectly in accord with her morality.
The useless and agonising were put out of the world by common consent;
the Euthanasia houses witnessed to it. Then why not she?... For she
could not bear it!... Then Oliver had come, she had fought her way back
to sanity and confidence; and the phantom had gone again.

How sensible and quiet he had been, she was beginning to tell herself
now, as the quiet influence of this huge throng in this glorious place
of worship possessed her once more--how reasonable in his explanation
th