“It keeps me from temptation,” said Bennett so earnestly that there was not the smallest hint of priggishness in him.
Serge took him by the arm and lifted him clean out of his chair and set him down with a jolt on to his feet.
“Keeps you from temptation, does it! How?—By running away from it.”
Bennett was very angry. He raised his voice:
“If you had to live in my house you wouldn’t talk like that. My father’s a drunken beast and my mother doesn’t even try to understand us. You’d believe in God if you lived in our house. . .” He came to an end suddenly. Serge patted him kindly on the shoulder.
“That’s all right. That’s all right. Let’s go upstairs and see what a happy home is like, or perhaps you would prefer to go and talk to my father and Father Soledano in the study.”
“I’ll go with you,” said Bennett.
They went upstairs, and Father Soledano joined Francis in the study. In the drawing-room they found Frederic holding forth about the performance in the school-room. The piece chosen was The Rose and the Ring, in a musical version.
Gertrude asked Bennett if he could sing. He replied that he could, and Frederic graciously allowed him the use of one of his songs, “On, on, my bark, dash through the foam.” Bennett had a light baritone voice with a curious harsh quality in the middle notes, but he loved singing and really let himself go. When he had finished Mrs. Folyat looked up from her Family Herald and said:
“Very nice, very nice indeed. Even Frederic does not sing it so well.”