would lie for hours motionless in the dark, secret,
echoing pine-forests, looking out between the
straight, tall trunks into the sunlit outer world of
flashing peaks and barren cliffs. Montanelli
watched him with a kind of sad envy.

"I wish you could show me what you see,
carino," he said one day as he looked up from his
book, and saw Arthur stretched beside him on the
moss in the same attitude as an hour before, gazing
out with wide, dilated eyes into the glittering
expanse of blue and white. They had turned aside
from the high-road to sleep at a quiet village near
the falls of the Diosaz, and, the sun being already
low in a cloudless sky, had mounted a point of pine-clad
rock to wait for the Alpine glow over the
dome and needles of the Mont Blanc chain. Arthur
raised his head with eyes full of wonder and
mystery.

"What I see, Padre? I see a great, white being
in a blue void that has no beginning and no end.
I see it waiting, age after age, for the coming of the
Spirit of God. I see it through a glass darkly."

Montanelli sighed.

"I used to see those things once."

"Do you never see them now?"