vivifying
breath of the sea. Sometimes after Communion He would treat Him so,
sometimes as He fell asleep, sometimes in the whirl of work. Yet His
consciousness did not seem to retain for long such experiences; five
minutes later, it might be, He would be wrestling once more with the all
but sensible phantoms of the mind and the heart.

There He lay, then, in the chair, revolving the intolerable blasphemies
that He had read. His white hair was thin upon His browned temples, His
hands were as the hands of a spirit, and His young face lined and
patched with sorrow. His bare feet protruded from beneath His stained
tunic, and His old brown burnous lay on the floor beside Him....

It was an hour before He moved, and the sun had already lost half its
fierceness, when the steps of the horses sounded in the paved court
outside. Then He sat up, slipped His feet into their shoes, and lifted
the burnous from the floor, as the door opened and the lean sun-burned
priest came through.

"The horses, Holiness," said the man.

* * * * *

The Pope spoke not one word that afternoon, until the two came towards
sunset up the bridle-path that leads between Thabor and Nazareth. They
had taken their usual round through Cana, mounting a hillock from which
the long mirror of Gennesareth could be seen, and passing on, always
bearing to the right, under the shadow of Thabor until once more
Esdraelon spread itself beneath like a grey-green carpet, a vast circle,
twenty miles across, sprinkled sparsely with groups of huts, white walls
and roofs, with Nain visible on the other side, Carmel heaving its long
form far off on the right, and Nazareth nestling a mile or two away on
the plateau on which they had halted.

It was a sight of extraordinary peace, and seemed an extract from some
old picture-book designed centuries ago. Here was no crowd of roofs, no
pressure of hot humanity, no terrible evidences of civilisation and
manufactory and strenuous, fruitless effort. A few tired Jews had come
back to this quiet little land, as old people may return to their native
place, with no hope of renewing their youth, or refinding their ideals,
but with a kind of sentimentality that prevails so often over more
logical motives, and a few more barrack-like houses had been added here
and there to the obscure villages in sight. But it was very much as it
had been a hundred years ago.

The plain was half shadowed by Carmel, and half in dusty golden light.
Ov