t evening. Oh, mother, it was
so wonderful!" The words rushed out of him. "He made you feel all
tingling like you do when the fire engine goes past. Oh, it's an evening
to remember! And it gave me Jesus! Oh, mother, you don't know what it's
like to find Jesus! To know"--his voice whistled exultantly over the
stricken tea-table--"that there's Somebody who really loves you!"

For one second Marion covered her face with her hands.

Unseeingly he piped on: "I'm happy now. Always happy." He broke into
thin, causeless laughter. "When I wake up in the middle of the night,
instead of feeling miserable like I used to, and remembering things that
happened at Dawlish when I was a kid, and wishing I hadn't ever been
born as I wasn't any good for anything, I just think of Jesus and feel
lovely and warm. And I've got earthly happiness as well. I've got Poppy.
Oh, I'm a lucky man, lucky man! And I've got a lifework instead of being
an odd-come-short. I'll always have something to do now. They've had
experience with all sorts of men for years and years, turning them into
soldiers for Jesus. Surely they'll be able to find some work for me,
even if they don't want me to preach. Look at what I'm going to do now.
Even if I don't do anything but clerk work, it's helping the Labour
Colony along--helping hundreds of poor souls to earn a decent living
under Bible influence when, if they weren't, there they'd be, roaming
about the streets hungry and in sin. I'll be doing my bit, won't I,
mother?"

She smiled beneficently but speechlessly.

Ellen felt contemptuous. She had read about those Hallelujah Army
Colonies for the unemployed, and had heard them denounced at labour
meetings, and they were, she knew, mere palliatives by using which the
pious gave themselves the pleasure of feeling that they were dealing
with the immense problem of poverty when they were merely taking a few
hundred men and setting them to work in uneconomic conditions. The very
consideration of them brought back the happy spasm in the throat, the
flood of fire through the veins, the conviction that amidst the
meadowsweet of some near field there lurked a dragon whose slaughter
(which would not be difficult) would restore the earth its lost
security; and all the hot, hopeful mood which filled her when she heard
talk of revolution. She hated the weak man for aggravating the offence
of his unsightliness by allying himself with the reactionary powers that
made this world as