ting," Amy answered coldly.
"What a baby you are about people, Martin. I should have thought all
your living abroad so much would have made you understanding. But
you're like the rest. You must have every one cut to the same pattern."

Martin looked up for a moment as though he would answer angrily; then
he controlled himself and said, laughing: "I suppose I have my
prejudices like every one else. I daresay Thurston's a very good sort
of fellow, but we don't like one another, and there's an end of it,
Everybody can't like everybody, Amy--why, even you don't like every
one."

"No, I don't," she answered shortly.

She looked for an instant at her mother. Martin caught the glance that
passed between them, and suddenly the discomfort of which he had been
aware as he stood, half an hour before, in the street, returned to him
with redoubled force. What was the matter with everybody? What had he
done?

"Well, I'll go and change," he said.

"Dinner will be ready in ten minutes, dear," said his mother.

"I'll be in time all right," he said.

At the door he almost ran into Mr. Thurston. This gentleman had been
described, on some earlier occasion, by an unfriendly observer as "the
Suburban Savonarola." He was tall and extremely thin with a bony
pointed face that was in some lights grey and in others white. He had
the excited staring eyes of a fanatic, and his hair now very scanty,
was plastered over his head in black shining streaks. He wore a rather
faded black suit, a white low collar and a white bow tie. He had a
habit, at moments of stress, of cracking his fingers. He had a very
pronounced cockney accent when he was excited, at other times he
struggled against this with some success.

He passed from brooding silences into sudden bursts of declamation with
such abruptness that strangers thought him very eloquent. When he was
excited the colour ran into his nose as though he had been drinking,
and often his ears were red. His history was simple. The son of a small
draper in Streatham, he had at an early age joined himself to an
American Revivalist called Harper. When after some six years of
successful enterprise Mr. Harper had been imprisoned for forgery, young
William Thurston had attached himself to a Christian Science Chapel in
Hoxton. Then, somewhere about 1897, he had met Miss Avies at a
Revivalist Meeting in the Albert Hall and, fascinated by her ardent
spirit, transferred his services to the Kingscote Brethren.