Gradually he became aware that this crowd was as no other that he had ever seen. To his psychical sense it seemed to him that it possessed a unity unlike any other. There was magnetism in the air. There was a sensation as if a creative act were in process, whereby thousands of individual cells were being welded more and more perfectly every instant into one huge sentient being with one will, one emotion, and one head. The crying of voices seemed significant only as the stirrings of this creative power which so expressed itself. Here rested this giant humanity, stretching to his sight in living limbs so far as he could see on every side, waiting, waiting for some consummation--stretching, too, as his tired brain began to guess, down every thoroughfare of the vast city. He did not even ask himself for what they waited. He knew, yet he did not know. He knew it was for a revelation--for something that should crown their aspirations, and fix them so for ever. He had a sense that he had seen all this before; and, like a child, he began to ask himself where it could have happened, until he remembered that it was so that he had once dreamt of the Judgment Day--of humanity gathered to meet Jesus Christ--Jesus Christ! Ah! how tiny that Figure seemed to him now--how far away--real indeed, but insignificant to himself--how hopelessly apart from this tremendous life! He glanced up at the Campanile. Yes; there was a piece of the True Cross there, was there not?--a little piece of the wood on which a Poor Man had died twenty centuries ago.... Well, well. It was a long way off.... He did not quite understand what was happening to him. “Sweet Jesus, be to me not a Judge but a Saviour,” he whispered beneath his breath, gripping the granite of the pillar; and a moment later knew how futile was that prayer. It was gone like a breath in this vast, vivid atmosphere of man. He had said mass, had he not? this morning--in white vestments.--Yes; he had believed it all then--desperately, but truly; and now.... To look into the future was as useless as to look into the past. There was no future, and no past: it was all one eternal instant, present and final.... Then he let go of effort, and again began to see with his bodily eyes. * * * * * The dawn was coming up the sky now, a steady soft brightening that appeared in spite of its sovereignty to be as nothing compared with the brilliant light of the streets. “We need no sun,” he whispered, smiling piteously; “no sun or light of a candle. We have our light on earth--the light that lighteneth every man....” The Campanile seemed further away than ever now, in that ghostly glimmer of dawn--more and more helpless every moment, compared with the beautiful vivid shining of the streets.