We both boarded the train for half the journey, and it did not appear to have any other passengers. Yet, reckless of the risks I was taking in travelling alone with a suspected being at such a time--for where might not he and the train go?--I accepted the chance; and as I took my seat and regarded that bright beard, the shadow of my awful doubt became really serious, for it was only this week that I have been reading _The Twilight of the Gods_. There was the disintegrating recollection of that book, with its stories of homeless immortals in search of new and more profitable employ; and there had been a bodiless voice in a motor lorry which ignored what I said but spoke instead to an inconsequential memory of mine that was strictly private; and there was the levity with which uniformed officials treated the essential institutions of civilization. All this gave me the sensation that even the fixed policy of our strong government might, at any moment now, roll up as a scroll. Off we went. My fellow-traveller was silent, though he was smiling at something which was not in the carriage, to my knowledge. When he spoke, his eyes were not fixed on me. He looked into the air, and talked to whatever it was he saw. He pointed a finger at the light of the city lying beyond and below our carriage window. "All they've built," he said, "stands only on a few odd notions. Now they're changing their notions, so down comes everything with a run. And don't they look surprised and pained!" (I felt like an eavesdropper, and thought I'd better show him I was present.) I apologized for overhearing him. He nodded shortly, a little condescendingly. "We've accepted _that_"--he poked his stick towards where stood our Imperial city in the night--"as if it came by itself. We never knew our city was like that just because we never saw it in any other light. Now we're upset to find the magic-lantern picture is fading. Got to put up with it, though." His book had been on the seat. It fell to the floor, and I picked it up and handed it to him. It was _The Twilight of the Gods_. If I could have remembered at that moment one of the simple dodges for averting the evil eye I should have used it. The laughing malice of that book had so confused me for some days that I had begun to feel that even St. Paul's, a blue bubble floating over London on the stream of Time, might vanish, as bubbles will. The Hidden Hand, I began to believe, had something in it. I intrigued a serious interview with my fellow-passenger, hoping to find evidence; and then the train stopped finally, six miles from home. At that very instant of time the train which we had previously rejected because it had no engine chose to run express through the station where we stood. XX. Figure-Heads