y _hour_...."

Ah-h-h! The crowd sighs with the old familiar joy, the magic of the
golden voice slips like a veil over the cruel angles of their broken
lives and mists and softens everything.

She has a slip of printed paper in her hand and reads seriously from
it; some one holds the transparency near her shoulder for light--her
white shoulders, bare in Trafalgar Square!

[Illustration: THEY ARE STILL AS DEATH, TRANCED IN THOSE LIQUID
BELL-TONES]

"I _need_ Thee every _hour_,
Most _gracious_ Lord,
No _tender_ voice like _thine_
Can _peace_ afford...."

They are still as death, tranced in those liquid bell-tones. The great
drum shivers, as it shivered, of old, a tom-tom, across the African
desert; the old, primal thrill creeps through my blood--good heavens,
is this fear? Is it superstition? _Is it religion?_

"I _need_ Thee--oh, I _need_ Thee!"

The woman sobs like a damned soul beside me; a man coughs huskily.
Will no one stop her? They have wedged me so that I cannot breathe, I
feel them gathering from the nearby streets. And there she stands,
coral like blood on her bare neck, the scarf fallen from her black
hair, the plea of all humanity pouring in a great anguished stream of
melody out of her white throat.

"I _need_ Thee oh, I _need_ Thee,
Ev'ry _hour_ I need Thee!"

The tambourine shudders barbarically across the smooth flood of her
voice: it is the tingling crash of the Greek Mysteries--and I had
thought it vulgar!

I hear hansoms jingling up--what will Roger say? He would kill them
all, if he could, I know, and yet no one there would hurt a hair of
her head--and does she not belong to the public?

God knows the poor devils need something--is it that, then? Is it a
real thing? Do people fight for it like that? For this imperious Voice
is agonising for something and the drum is the beat of its heart.

"Gawd's frightful hard on women," the poor creature beside me moans,
and lo, the little dumb lieutenant is by her side miraculously, and
like a shifting kaleidoscope the crowd lets them through and she
kneels, shaking, by the drum.

Their white faces heap in layers before me; drawn, wolfish, brutal in
the flaring lights they peer and gasp and sob, like uncouth
inhabitants of another world--wait a bit, Jerry, it is your world,
just the same, and perhaps you are responsible for it? Ugh!

"I _need_ Thee ..."

"Gad, it's little Josefa!"

The clear English voice