And now Avanel comments:—“If you look deeply into the aphorisms my father serves with his apples and with his paper money theory, you will find, though he is no atheist or mocker, he is a son of the narrow, dry antagonisms of some of the village atheist stock with which our blood mingled during our sojourn in Egypt. I glory in my Indian ancestry, even if I do not make myself conspicuous with my hair loose and my left hand crimson. But as to my father’s village-infidel streak, I have no use for it. Moreover, I heard him ding dong his doctrines in my childhood at times when he was not at his best. I know better how to take St. Friend. Both are narrow as mousetraps on their literal side, if one has a turn for being caught. “I think I choose St. Friend for my guide, because he begins and ends with prayer. I do not stay away from motion pictures, as he commands, nor from the Yellow Dance Halls, as he and my father both command. But I distrust these places, because of the warnings of these good men. I will eat this bread, you and I will eat it together, though I know it is railed at in the Yellow Dance Halls, and I know the keen things that are said there against such superstitions. We will continue to eat together the Amaranth-Apples that are tabooed there. We will read together the proverbs and songs and prayers of St. Scribe and, while our feet may be in the Yellow Halls, our souls will be making the pilgrimage of the one hundred religions. We will be thinking together how the whole human race is the body of Christ, soon to be raised from the dead.” And so this evening Avanel invites me to her own select table in the inn at the top of one of the great northwest gates, the inner gate, that overlooks the former village of Ashland, Cass County, and is one of the chief glories of the Inner Wall. It is the Musicians’ Building and from here oftener than anywhere else on this wall, sound the special evening hymns and organ solos and chimes, over this whole segment of the city and over the forest parks to the north, between the walls. Pilgrims pass through the gate beneath us. They have visited, according to the ritual, Lincoln’s monument, the First Shrine of St. Scribe—Hunter Kelly, and they are hurrying along his great highway leading northwest through the Gate of the Outer Wall, that overlooks the former village of Virginia in old Cass County. Our refractory is called:—The Pilgrim’s First Inn. It is on the cafeteria principle but is a most spacious place, being the whole floor of the tower, with tremendous sheets of glass for windows, so that an aviator, circling it, can see straight through it from every angle, and all the colored and decorative searchlights of this happy June evening sweep through it as the twilight comes on, lights for the most part of the delicate tints of the towers:—more like rapid clouds, left over from the sunset, than sharp, searching, swords.