But in any case America was powerless: the balance of the world was overwhelmingly against her.
Percy threw himself, as he was, on to his bed, and lay there with drumming pulses, closed eyes and a huge despair at his heart.

The world indeed had risen like a giant over the horizons of Rome, and the holy city was no better now than a sand castle before a tide.

So much he grasped.

As to how ruin would come, in what form and from what direction, he neither knew nor cared.

Only he knew now that it would come.
He had learned by now something of his own temperament; and he turned his eyes inwards to observe himself bitterly, as a doctor in mortal disease might with a dreadful complacency diagnose his own symptoms.