“I know it well,” he said pompously in a tone of finality; “it

lasts three, six, or nine days. But once across the Golfe de Lyons we

shall be free of it.”

“You think so? Ah, I am glad,” ventured the priest with a timid

smile while he adroitly balanced meat and bullet-like green peas upon

his knife-blade. Tone, smile, and gesture were so gentle that the use

of steel in any form seemed incongruous.

The voice of the fur-merchant came in domineeringly.

“Of course. I have made this trip so often, I know. St. Petersburg

to Paris, a few weeks on the Riviera, then back by Constantinople and

the Crimea. It is nothing. I remember last year–-” He pushed a large

pearl pin more deeply into his speckled tie and began a story that

proved chiefly how luxuriously he travelled. His eyes tried to draw

the whole end of the table into his circle, but while the Armenian

listened politely, with smiles and bows, Dr. Stahl turned to the

Irishman again. It was the year of Halley’s comet and he began

talking interestingly about it.

” … Three o’clock in the morning—any morning, yes—is the

best time,” the doctor concluded, “and I’ll have you called. You must

see it through my telescope. End of this week, say, after we leave

Catania and turn eastwards …”

And at this instant, following a roar of laughter from the

Captain’s table, came one of those abrupt pauses that sometimes catch

an entire room at once. All voices hushed. Even the merchant, setting

down his champagne glass, fell silent. One heard only the beating of

the steamer’s screw, the rush of water below the port-holes, the soft

scuffle of the stewards’ feet. The conclusion of the doctor’s

inconsiderable sentence was sharply audible all over the room—

” … crossing the Ionian Sea towards the Isles of Greece.”

It rang across the pause, and at the same moment O’Malley caught

the eyes of the big stranger lifted suddenly and fixed upon the

speaker’s face as though the words had summoned him.

They shifted the same instant to his own, then dropped again to

his plate. Again the clatter of conversation drowned the room as

before; the merchant resumed his self-description in terms of gold;

the doctor discussed the gases of the comet’s tail. But the

swift-blooded Irishman felt himself caught away strangely and suddenly

into another world. Out of the abyss of the subconscious there rose a

gesture prophetic and immense. The trivial phrase and that intercepted

look opened a great door of wonder in his heart. In a second he grew

“absent-minded.” Or, rather, something touched a button and the whole

machinery of his personality shifted round noiselessly and

instantaneously, presenting an immediate new facet to the world. His

normal, puny self-consciousness slipped a moment into the majestic

calm of some far larger state that the stranger also knew. The

Universe lies in every human heart, and he plunged into that

archetypal world that stands so close behind all sensible appearances.

He could neither explain nor attempt to explain, but he sailed away

into some giant swimming mood of beauty wherein steamer, passengers,

talk, faded utterly, the stranger and his son remaining alone real and

vital. He had seen; he could never forget.