I It seemed to Percy Franklin as he drew near Rome, sliding five hundred feet high through the summer dawn, that he was approaching the very gates of heaven, or, still better, he was as a child coming home.

For what he had left behind him ten hours before in London was not a bad specimen, he thought, of the superior mansions of hell.

It was a world whence God seemed to have withdrawn Himself, leaving it indeed in a state of profound complacency--a state without hope or faith, but a condition in which, although life continued, there was absent the one essential to well-being.

It was not that there was not expectation--for London was on tip-toe with excitement.

There were rumours of all kinds: Felsenburgh was coming back; he was back; he had never gone.