hour earlier than expected. Enraged that a priest would visit his home, Oliver is utterly infuriated that his mother would actually request such a thing. Despite his outraged demands, Father Franklin refuses to reveal who acted as the go-between. To Oliver's shock, Mabel urges Father Franklin to leave in peace. She explains that he will see Felsenburgh and the overflowing joy that his arrival has occasioned in England. This is why, Mabel explains, she is no longer afraid of him or of others like him. Deeply surprised that he will not be arrested, Father Franklin leaves into the summer night. As he returns to Victoria Station, Father Franklin encounters a rally being addressed by Senator Felsenburgh. For a brief moment, the Senator's hypnotic powers of persuasion cause the priest to believe in him, but Father Franklin's doubts about the Catholic Faith are soon overcome. Book II: The Encounter As Oliver Brand reads Mabel an account of Felsenburgh's arrival in England in the Marxist newspaper New People, it is revealed that the Senator, who speaks all languages with equal fluency, has been hailed as the Mahdi throughout the Islamic World. It boasts that his background has nothing "that convicts him of sin", in contrast to the corrupt practices that have "made the sister continent what she is today". It adds, however, "Of his actual words we have nothing to say. So far as we are aware, no reporter made notes at the moment; but the speech, delivered in Esperanto, was a very simple one; and very short. It consisted of a brief announcement of the great fact of Universal Brotherhood, a congratulation to all who were yet as live to witness this consummation of history; and at the end, an ascription of praise to the Spirit of the World whose incarnation was now accomplished." The article proceeds to mock the supernatural as dead. It announces that a new and enlightened age has come and that mankind is finally ready for world peace. Meanwhile, as her son is away with Felsenburgh, Mrs. Brand takes a sudden turn for the worse. Ignoring Mabel's sermons about how Christianity has divided the human race and caused nothing but terrible violence, Mrs. Brand pleads for Father Franklin to be summoned. When Oliver returns home that day, a weeping Mabel informs him that his mother died an hour before. Clutching her rosary, Mrs. Brand had continued to