"Well, Versailles, even, didn't quite do it," he said. "It seemed to me a kind of game--certainly a very pleasant one; but----" (He broke off.) "But what we've seen to-day seems somehow the real thing." "I don't quite understand." "Well, I can see for myself now that all that you've told me is real--that the world's really Christian, and so on. It was those Chinese guards, I think, which as much as anything----" "Chinese? . . . I don't remember them." The prelate smiled again. "Well, I scarcely noticed them at the time, either. But I've been thinking about them. And then all the rest of it . . . and the Pope. . . . By the way, I couldn't make out his face very well. Is that a picture of him?" He stood up suddenly and stepped across to where the portrait hung. There was nothing very startling about the picture. It showed just a very ordinary face with straight closed lips, of a man seated in an embossed chair, with the familiar white cap, cassock, and embroidered stole with spade-ends. "He looks quite ordinary," mused Monsignor aloud. "It's . . . it's like the face of a business man." "Oh yes, he's ordinary. He's an extremely good man and quite intelligent. He's never had any very great crisis to face, you know. They say he's a good financier. . . . You look disappointed." "I hadn't expected him to look like that," said the prelate, musing. "Why not?" "Well, he seems to have an extraordinary position in the world. I should have expected more of a----" "More of a great man? Monsignor, don't you think that the Average Man makes the best ruler?" "But that's rank Democracy!" "Not at all. Democracy doesn't give the Average Man any real power at all. It swamps him among his fellows--that is to say, it kills his individuality; and his individuality is the one thing he has which is worth anything."