verything just now was _grit_.

A few other short speeches followed, mostly of the common Secularist
type, in defence of the newspapers attacked. But the defence, on the
whole, was shuffling and curiously half-hearted. Robert, sitting by with
his head on his hand, felt that there, at any rate, his onslaught had
told.

He said a few words in reply, in a low husky voice, without a trace of
his former passion, and the meeting broke up. The room had quickly
filled when it was known that he was up again; and as he descended the
steps of the platform, after shaking hands with the chairman, the
hundreds present broke into a sudden burst of cheering. Lady Charlotte
pressed forward to him through the crowd, offering to take him home.
'Come with us, Mr. Elsmere: you look like a ghost.' But he shook his
head, smiling. 'No, thank you, Lady Charlotte--I must have some air,'
and he took her out on his arm, while Flaxman followed with Rose.

It once occurred to Flaxman to look round for the priest he had seen
come in. But there were no signs of him. 'I had an idea he would have
spoken,' he thought. 'Just as well, perhaps. We should have had a row.'

Lady Charlotte threw herself back in the carriage as they drove off,
with a long breath, and the inward reflection, 'So his wife wouldn't
come and hear him! Must be a woman with a character that--a Strafford in
petticoats!'

* * * * *

Robert turned up the street to the City, the tall slight figure seeming
to shrink together as he walked. After his passionate effort,
indescribable depression had overtaken him.

'Words--words!' he said to himself, striking out his hands in a kind of
feverish protest, as he strode along, against his own powerlessness,
against that weight of the present and the actual which seems to the
enthusiast alternately light as air, or heavy as the mass of AEtna on the
breast of Enceladus.

Suddenly, at the corner of a street, a man's figure in a long black robe
stopped him and laid a hand on his arm.

'Newcome!' cried Robert, standing still.

'I was there,' said the other, bending forward and looking close into
his eyes. 'I heard almost all. I went to confront, to denounce you!'

By the light of a lamp not far off Robert caught the attenuated
whiteness and sharpness of the well-known face, to which weeks of
fasting and mystical excitement had given a kind of unearthly
remoteness. He gathered himself together with an inward g