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205 already bright. That western façade with its hundreds of little figures tells the whole story of God and Man from Adam to the Last Judgment, as the mediæval mind conceived it. It is an even fuller exposition than the carved Bible history that goes round the chapter house at Salisbury. It presented the universe, said Sir Richmond, as a complete crystal globe. It explained everything in life in a simple and natural manner, hope, heaven, devil and despair. Generations had lived and died mentally within that crystal globe, convinced that it was all and complete.

“And now,” said Miss Grammont, “we are in limitless space and time. The crystal globe is broken.”

“And?” said Belinda amazingly—for she had been silent for some time, “the goldfish are on the floor, V.V. Free to flop about. Are they any happier?”

It was one of those sudden rhetorical triumphs that are best left alone. “I trow not,” said Belinda, giving the last touch to it.

After dinner Sir Richmond and Miss Grammont walked round the cathedral and along by the moat of the bishop’s palace, and Miss Seyffert stayed in the hotel to send off postcards to her friends, a duty she had neglected for some days. The evening was warm and still and the moon was approaching its full and very bright. Insensibly the soft afterglow passed into moonlight.