was so idle that he could wonder
how his father had contrived to get there, and whether Maggie was
staying at home with Clara. But the visualisation of India's coral
strand in Saint Luke's Square persisted. A phrase in the speech loosed
some catch in him and he turned suddenly to Hilda, and in an intimate
half-whisper murmured--

"More blood!"

"What?" she harshly questioned. But he knew that she understood.

"Well," he said audaciously, "look at it! It only wants the Ganges at
the bottom of the Square!"

No one heard save she. But she put her hand on his arm protestingly.
"Even if we don't believe," said she--not harshly, but imploringly, "we
needn't make fun."

"We don't believe!" And that new tone of entreaty! She had
comprehended without explanation. She was a weird woman. Was there
another creature, male or female, to whom he would have dared to say
what he had said to her? He had chosen to say it to her because he
despised her, because he wished to trample on her feelings. She roused
the brute in him, and perhaps no one was more astonished than himself to
witness the brute stirring. Imagine saying to the gentle and sensitive
Janet: "It only wants the Ganges at the bottom of the Square--" He could
not.

They stood silent, gazing and listening. And the sun went higher in the
sky and blazed down more cruelly. And then the speech ended, and the
speaker wiped his head with an enormous handkerchief. And the
multitude, led by the brazen instruments, which in a moment it
overpowered, was singing to a solemn air--

When I survey the wondrous cross On which the Prince of Glory died, My
richest gain I count but loss, And pour contempt on all my pride.

Hilda shook her head.

"What's the matter?" he asked, leaning towards her from his barrel.

"That's the most splendid religious verse ever written!" she said
passionately. "You can say what you like. It's worth while believing
anything, if you can sing words like that and mean them!"

She had an air of restrained fury.

But fancy exciting herself over a hymn!

"Yes, it is fine, that is!" he agreed.

"Do you know who wrote it?" she demanded menacingly.

"I'm afraid I don't remember," he said. The hymn was one of his
earliest recollections, but it had never occurred to him to be curious
as to its authorship.

Her lips sneered. "Dr Watts, of course!" she snapped.

He could hear her, beneath the tremendous chanting from the Square,
repeat