ol....

Then once more he began to think of it all over again.

Surely it was this which was wanted against the Masons; and women,
too.--Had not scheme after scheme broken down because men had forgotten
the power of women? It was that lack that had ruined Napoleon: he had
trusted Josephine, and she had failed him; so he had trusted no other
woman. In the Catholic Church, too, woman had been given no active work
but either menial or connected with education: and was there not room
for other activities than those? Well, it was useless to think of it. It
was not his affair. If _Papa Angelicus_ who now reigned in Rome had not
thought of it, why should a foolish, conceited priest in Westminster set
himself up to do so?

So he beat himself on the breast once more, and took up his office-book.

He finished in half an hour, and again sat thinking; but this time it
was of poor Father Francis. He wondered what he was doing now; whether
he had taken off the Roman collar of Christ's familiar slaves? The poor
devil! And how far was he, Percy Franklin, responsible?

When a tap came at his door presently, and Father Blackmore looked in
for a talk before going to bed, Percy told him what had happened.

Father Blackmore removed his pipe and sighed deliberately.

"I knew it was coming," he said. "Well, well."

"He has been honest enough," explained Percy. "He told me eight months
ago he was in trouble."

Father Blackmore drew upon his pipe thoughtfully.

"Father Franklin," he said, "things are really very serious. There is
the same story everywhere. What in the world is happening?"

Percy paused before answering.

"I think these things go in waves," he said.

"Waves, do you think?" said the other.

"What else?"

Father Blackmore looked at him intently.

"It is more like a dead calm, it seems to me," he said. "Have you ever
been in a typhoon?"

Percy shook his head.

"Well," went on the other, "the most ominous thing is the calm. The sea
is like oil; you feel half-dead: you can do nothing. Then comes the
storm."

Percy looked at him, interested. He had not seen this mood in the priest
before.

"Before every great crash there comes this calm. It is always so in
history. It was so before the Eastern War; it was so before the French
Revolution. It was so before the Reformation. There is a kind of oily
heaving; and everything is languid. So everything has been in America,
too, for over eighty years.... Father Frankli