Words came to him in a flood—words magically compelling, that burned and quivered in their intense appeal. For an hour he held the interest of the great assembly as no orator had done, sketching with hard and pitiless directness the ramifications of the grim traffic that blasted whatsoever it touched, that knew no social bar, before which the magnate's mansion and the labourer's tenement were as one, against which no bolt or chain—save it be one wrought by the law of a Sovereign Commonwealth—might avail.
In his words was no tang of the study, none of the didactic methods of the arm-chair student, no array of statistics. What he expressed had been seared upon his soul, in inextinguishable letters and as he spoke shooting pictures etched themselves as if on some quivering panorama in his brain: he saw the black bottle in the wall-cabinet of his inner office—the hidden sanctuary where he had signed away his talent and linked his years to the demon of remorse: he saw the representative of the great Corporation, whose power flowed from that traffic, holding in his merciless hand the happiness of a woman that had been dearer than his own life: he saw the cringing hatred in the eyes of Paddy the Brick, the furtive drink-lined faces of the jail corridors. And in his passionate denunciation, he called upon those who heard him to do their part to rid the state of its Master and to set it free. Lastly, in a peroration which carried all before it, he pictured a community from which the unendurable stain had been forever wiped away, the pitfalls of its youth filled up, the shame of its prisons lightened—a community ruled no longer by King Alcohol, but by the Genius of the Home, to which freedom no longer stood for ribald license and self-harm, but for the Common Good.
He stopped amid a dense silence—the truest tribute to real oratory—then with a great burst, the storm of approval came.
It filled the hall with electric feeling, surging in waves that overtopped all decorum and made the hour significant and momentous. Near him Harry saw the party leaders, among them Judge Allen, newly-elected President of the Civic Club; they showed a singular self-assurance overlaid by vivid excitement. In the galleries were banks of feminine faces, tier on tier, merged in a tumultuous hand-clapping like silver rain. Below, the house was on its feet, a sea of waving flags and handkerchiefs.
The tumult swelled, then died away to pulsing band-music and in the subsidence, Brent leaned over Harry's shoulder to give him the quick pressure of a hand—words could not have said so much.
It was not until the convention had adjourned for an hour's recess that Harry could escape from the congratulations that poured upon him where he sat. While he spoke, the sense of mastery and domination had possessed him; now he was feeling the inevitable revulsion, and with it came the fading of his confidence and the relifting of the old sickening question.
It had surged back before the applause had died away, the moment he had released his mind from the clamping resolution of his purpose, springing upon him like a cunning enemy who had dogged him in the shadow. His roseate speculations of the Bungalow seemed now but hollow wraiths that had mocked him with an unrealisable promise. Could he ever for a moment have cheated himself into forgetfulness of the impasse that lay there?
With Brent beside him, he pushed his way to the foyer. There the press was thickened and they were blocked in a corner by the stream of people pouring from the galleries, from which position Harry found himself nodding across to enthusiastic greetings of old acquaintances.
"Good heavens!" fumed Brent, impatiently. "We'll never get out at this rate. Let's try the other door." Harry turned with him, seeking a way through the diminishing crowd. Then, abruptly he stopped. Near at hand, her side-face turned toward him, was Echo. Her delicate colour was heightened by an unwonted flush and her eyes shone softly under the curling golden waves of her hair.
Gazing in a confusion that was almost panic, Harry felt, with a burning sense of helplessness and cowardice, the impossibility of his position. The sight of her was like a cooling stream to a famished wanderer in the desert. It called to him with a thousand voices, lifting before him every sweet reminder of vanished things. She had not yet seen him, and as the crowd swept her slowly closer, he felt to the full his own blindness and egregious self-assurance that had made this plunge into the old current seem possible. He watched her with a fascinated intensity. She was speaking to some one beside her, her glance wandering. It shifted, then was raised, as if by very attraction, to his face.