o came
trooping in, grinned up into Robert's face and retreated again with
red cheeks, the silver badge tight clasped in hands which not even much
scrubbing could make passable.

Flaxman stood and watched it from the side. It was an extraordinary
scene: the crowd, the slight figure on the platform, the two great
inscriptions, which represented the only 'articles' of the new faith,
gleaming from the freshly colored walls:--

'_In thee, O Eternal, have I put my trust!_'
'_This do in remembrance of Me:_'--

--the recesses on either side of the hall lined with white marble,
and destined, the one to hold the names of the living members of the
Brotherhood; the other to commemorate those who had passed away (empty
this last save for the one poor name of 'Charles Richards'); the
copies of Giotto's Paduan Virtues--Faith, Fortitude, Charity, and the
like-which broke the long wall at intervals. The cynic in the onlooker
tried to assert itself against the feeling with which the air seemed
overcharged in vain.

Whatever comes of it, Flaxman said to himself with strong, involuntary
conviction, 'whether he fails or no, the spirit that is moving here
is the same spirit that spread the Church, the spirit that sent out
Benedictine and Franciscan into the world, that fired the children of
Luther, or Calvin, or George Fox; the spirit of devotion, through a man,
to an idea; through one much-loved, much-trusted soul to some
eternal verity, newly caught, newly conceived, behind it. There is no
approaching the idea for the masses except through the human life; there
is no lasting power for the man except as the slave of the idea!'

A week later he wrote to his aunt as follows. He could not write to her
of Rose, he did hot care to write of himself, and he knew that Elsmere's
Club address had left a mark even on her restless and overcrowded mind.
Moreover he himself was absorbed.

'We are in the full stream of religion--making. I watch it with a
fascination you at a distance cannot possibly understand, even when my
judgement demurs, and my intelligence protests that the thing cannot
live without Elsmere, and that Elsmere's life is a frail one. After the
ceremony of enrolment which I described to you yesterday the Council of
the New Brotherhood was chosen by popular election, and Elsmere gave an
address. Two-thirds of the council, I should think, are workingmen, the
rest of the upper class; Elsmere, of course, President.'

'Sin