separates it from all other religions.  He would have supposed, if he had stopped to think, that, as with other sects, one considered its tenets, made up one’s mind as to their truth or falsehood one by one, and if one believed a sufficient majority of them joined the Church.  It was only, then, the mood of the moment, and when, he found himself really moving towards that finger-post he excused himself by thinking that as he was, by his own act, exiled, from, more familiar temples, he would visit this that would have about it a suggestion of France.

He wondered if it would be open as he turned into Ashley Gardens.  He glanced at his watch; it was only just after seven.  Perhaps an early Mass might be beginning.  He went to the central doors and found them fast; then he saw little groups of people and individuals like himself making for the door in the great tower, and these he followed within.

He stood amazed for a few minutes.  The vast soaring space, so austere in its bare brick, gripped his imagination.  The white and red and gold of the painted Christ that hung so high and monstrous before the entrance to the marbles of the sanctuary almost troubled him.  It dominated everything so completely that he felt he could not escape it.  He sought one of the many chairs and knelt down.

A little bell tinkled, Peter glanced sideways towards the sound, and saw that a Mass was in progress in a side-chapel of gleaming mosaics, and that a soldier in uniform served.  Hardly had he taken the details in, when another bell claimed his attention.  It came from across the wide nave, and he perceived that another chapel had its Mass, and a considerable congregation.  And then, his attention aroused, he began to spy about and to take in the thing.

The whole vast cathedral was, as it were, alive.  Seven or eight Masses were in progress.  One would scarcely finish before another priest, preceded by soldier in uniform or server in cassock and cotta, would appear from beyond the great pulpit and make his way to yet another altar.  The small handbells rang out again and again and again, and still priest after priest was there to take his place.  Peter began cautiously to move about.  He became amazed at the size of the congregation.  They had been lost in that great place, but every chapel had its people, and there were, in reality, hundreds scattered about in the nave alone.

He knelt for awhile and watched the giving of Communion in the guarded chapel to the north of the high altar.  Its gold and emblazoned gates were not for him, but he could at least kneel and watch those who passed in and out.  They were of all sorts and classes, of all ranks and ages; men, women, children, old and young, rich and poor, soldier and civilian, streamed in and out again.  Peter sighed and left them.  He found an altar at which Mass was about to begin, and he knelt at the back on a mosaic pavement in which fishes and strange beasts were set in a marble stream, and watched.  And it was not one Mass that he watched, but two or three, and it was there that a vision grew on his inner understanding, as he knelt and could not pray.