y--but meantime the warmth and
light were exhilarating. Yes, he was delighted that she happened to be
clear of the falling volor.

He gave no more thought to his exposition of the Christian creed; it was
a mere commonplace to him that Catholics believed that kind of thing; it
was no more blasphemous to his mind so to describe it, than it would be
to laugh at a Fijian idol with mother-of-pearl eyes, and a horse-hair
wig; it was simply impossible to treat it seriously. He, too, had
wondered once or twice in his life how human beings could believe such
rubbish; but psychology had helped him, and he knew now well enough that
suggestion will do almost anything. And it was this hateful thing that
had so long restrained the euthanasia movement with all its splendid
mercy.

His brows wrinkled a little as he remembered his mother's exclamation,
"Please God"; then he smiled at the poor old thing and her pathetic
childishness, and turned once more to his table, thinking in spite of
himself of his wife's hesitation as she had seen the splash of blood on
her shoe. Blood! Yes; that was as much a fact as anything else. How was
it to be dealt with? Why, by the glorious creed of Humanity--that
splendid God who died and rose again ten thousand times a day, who had
died daily like the old cracked fanatic Saul of Tarsus, ever since the
world began, and who rose again, not once like the Carpenter's Son, but
with every child that came into the world. That was the answer; and was
it not overwhelmingly sufficient?

Mr. Phillips came in an hour later with another bundle of papers.

"No more news from the East, sir," he said.

CHAPTER II

I

Percy Franklin's correspondence with the Cardinal-Protector of England
occupied him directly for at least two hours every day, and for nearly
eight hours indirectly.

For the past eight years the methods of the Holy See had once more been
revised with a view to modern needs, and now every important province
throughout the world possessed not only an administrative metropolitan
but a representative in Rome whose business it was to be in touch with
the Pope on the one side and the people he represented on the other. In
other words, centralisation had gone forward rapidly, in accordance with
the laws of life; and, with centralisation, freedom of method and
expansion of power. England's Cardinal-Protector was one Abbot Martin, a
Benedictine, and it was Percy's business, as of a dozen more bishops,