s in the
working-class centres where he was in vogue as a lecturer were
touched--nay, possessed--by it. The crowd of more or less socialistic
newspapers which had lately sprung up in London were full of it; the
working men's clubs rang with it. It seemed to him a madness--an
infection; and it spread like one. The book had soon reached an immense
sale, and was in every one's hands.

To Hallin, a popular teacher, interested above all in the mingled
problems of ethics and economics, such an incident was naturally of
extreme importance. But he was himself opposed by deepest conviction,
intellectual and moral, to the book and its conclusions. The more its
success grew, the more eager and passionate became his own desire to
battle with it. His platform, of course, was secured to him; his
openings many. Hundreds and thousands of men all over England were keen
to know what he had to say about the new phenomenon.

And he had been saying his say--throwing into it all his energies, all
his finest work. With the result that--for the first time in eleven
years--he felt his position in the working-class movement giving beneath
his feet, and his influence beginning to drop from his hand. Coldness in
place of enthusiasm; critical aloofness in place of affection; readiness
to forget and omit him in matters where he had always hitherto belonged
to the inner circle and the trusted few--these bitter ghosts, with their
hard, unfamiliar looks, had risen of late in his world of idealist
effort and joy, and had brought with them darkness and chill. He could
not give way, for he had a singular unity of soul--it had been the
source of his power--and every economical or social conviction was in
some way bound up with the moral and religious passion which was his
being--his inmost nature. And his sensitive state of nerve and brain,
his anchorite's way of life, did not allow him the distractions of other
men. The spread of these and other similar ideas seemed to him a
question of the future of England; and he had already begun to throw
himself into the unequal struggle with a martyr's tenacity, and with
some prescience of the martyr's fate.

Even Bennett! As he sat there alone in the dim lamp-light, his head bent
over his knees, his hands hanging loosely before him, he thought
bitterly of the defection of that old friend who had stood by him
through so many lesser contests. It was _impossible_ that Bennett
should think the schemes of that book f