Then, as he stood, a door opened somewhere in front, and he thought he heard voices talking again. It reassured him, and he went on. It was not until he found himself in a small lobby (comparatively small that is, for it was not less than forty feet square, and the painted coffered ceiling was twenty feet above his head), that he stopped again, completely bewildered. There was no longer any sound to guide him, for he had closed a couple of passage-doors behind him as he came; and he noticed that practically complete silence was on all sides; a single illuminated half-globe shone gently from the ceiling overhead. He stood some time considering and listening to the silence, till he became aware that it was not silence. There was a very faint murmur of a voice behind one of the four doors that opened on this lobby; and beside the door there rested (he now noticed for the first time) the halberd of a Swiss, as if the soldier had just been called within. This decided him; he went to the door, laid his hand upon the handle, and immediately the murmur ceased. He pushed down the handle and opened the door. For a moment as he stared within he could not understand: he had expected a passage--a guard-room--at least something secular. Yet it was some kind of a chapel or sacristy into which he was looking: he observed the outline of an altar with its crucifix; and two figures. Then one of the figures--in the habit of a Franciscan, barefooted, with a purple stole across its shoulders--had sprung towards him, and half pushed, half waved him backwards again. "What are you doing here? How dare you----I beg pardon, Monsignor, but----" "I beg pardon, father; I had lost my way. . . . I am a stranger." "Back--back that way, Monsignor," stammered the friar. "The guard should have told you." The truth was dawning on the prelate little by little, helped by the flash of the other kneeling white figure he had seen within. "Yes," stammered the friar again. "The Holy Father. Back that way, Monsignor. Yes, yes--that door straight opposite." It was over; the two doors had closed almost simultaneously, behind the friar as he had gone back to his duty, and behind the priest who now stood again at the end of the long corridor down which he had come. He stood here now, strangely moved and affected. He had seen nothing remarkable in itself--the Pope at confession. And yet in some manner, beyond the startling fact that he had groped his way, all unknowing, to the Pope's private apartments, and at such a moment, the dramatic contrast between the glare and noise of the reception outside--itself the climax of a series of brilliant external splendours--and the silent half-lighted chapel where the Lord of All kneeled to confess his sins, caused a surprising disturbance in his soul.