He slipped along the seat to where his scarlet cincture and cap
lay, and began to put these on.

Monsignor sprang across and lifted down the great Roman
cloak from its peg.

"You had better get ready yourself," said the Cardinal. "They
will be here in a moment."

As the priest slipped on his second shoe, a sound suddenly
stopped him dead for an instant. It was the sound of voices
talking somewhere beneath in the fog. Then he finished, and stood
up, just as there slid cautiously upwards, like a whale coming up
to breathe, past the window by which the Cardinal was now
standing cloaked and hatted, first a shining roof, then a row of
little ventilators, and finally a line of windows against which a
dozen faces were pressed. He saw them begin to stir as the
scarlet of the Cardinal met their eyes.

"We can sit down again," said the old man, smiling. "The rest is
a matter for the engineers."

It seemed strange afterwards to the priest how little real or
active terror he felt. He was conscious of a certain sickly
sensation, and of a sourish taste on his lips, as he licked them
from time to time; but scarcely more than this, except perhaps of
a sudden shivering spasm that shook him once or twice as the
fog-laden breeze poured in upon him.

He sat there watching through the windows in a kind of