Cheers ran and rippled along the lines as the great men were recognised--Lord Pemberton, Oliver Brand and his wife, Mr.Caldecott, Maxwell, Snowford, with the European delegates--even melancholy-faced Mr.Francis himself, the Government _ceremoniarius_, received a greeting.

But by a quarter to eleven, when the pealing bells paused, the stream had stopped, the barriers issued out to stop the roads, the wire palisadings vanished, and the crowd for an instant, ceasing its roaring, sighed with relief at the relaxed pressure, and surged out into the roadways.

Then once more the roaring began for Julian Felsenburgh.
The sun was now high, still a copper disc, above the Victoria Tower, but paler than an hour ago; the whiteness of the Abbey, the heavy greys of Parliament House, the ten thousand tints of house-roofs, heads, streamers, placards began to disclose themselves.
A single bell tolled five minutes to the hour, and the moments slipped by, until once more the bell stopped, and to the ears of those within hearing of the great west doors came the first blare of the huge organ, reinforced by trumpets.

And then, as sudden and profound as the hush of death, there fell an enormous silence.
II As the five-minutes bell began, sounding like a continuous wind-note in the great vaults overhead, solemn and persistent, Mabel drew a long breath and leaned back in her seat from the rigid position in which for the last half-hour she had been staring out at the wonderful sight.

She seemed to herself to have assimilated it at last, to be herself once more, to have drunk her fill of the triumph and the beauty.