Never before had he seen such a woman; never had he dreamed that there could be anyone like her.
Years before he had seen, and fancied himself in love with, Lady Blanche Huntingford. He had been captivated by her glorious young womanhood, her abundant vitality, her queenly beauty. But, compared with the woman on the platform, Blanche Huntingford was as firelight to sunlight.
Even as he sat there he compared them—contrasted them. He remembered what he had thought of the proud Surrey beauty; how he had raved about her eyes, her hair, her figure; but here was a beauty of another and a higher order. Even in his most enthusiastic moments, Lady Blanche's intellectuality, her spirituality, had never appealed to him. But this woman's beauty was glorified by eyes that spoke of exalted thoughts, passionate longings, lofty emotions.
Her face, too, was constantly changing. Poetry, humour, passion, pity, tenderness, scorn were expressed on her features as she looked at the speaker. This woman was poetry incarnate! She was pity incarnate! She was passion incarnate!
Dick forgot where he was. He was altogether unconscious of the fact that he was in a meeting somewhere in the East End of London, and that things were being said which, if known to the police, would place the speaker, and perhaps the listeners, in prison. All that seemed as nothing; he was chained, fascinated by the almost unearthly beauty of the woman who sat on the little shabby-looking platform.
Then slowly the incongruity of the situation came to him. The audience, although warmly dressed and apparently comfortably conditioned, belonged in the main to the working classes. They were toilers. Most of them were malcontents—people who under almost any conditions would be opposed to law and order. But this woman was an aristocrat of aristocrats. No one could doubt it any more than he could doubt the sunlight. Her dress, too, was rich and beautiful. On her fingers costly rings sparkled; around her neck diamonds hung. And yet she was here in a cellar warehouse, in a district where squalor abounded.
The speaker finished; evidently he was the chairman of the meeting, and after having finished his harangue turned to the others on the platform.
Dick heard the word "Olga," and immediately after the room was full of deafening cheers.
The woman he had been watching rose to her feet and waited while the people continued to cheer. Fascinated, he gazed at her as her eyes swept over the gathering. Then his heart stood still. She looked towards him, and their eyes met. There might have been recognition, so brightly did her eyes flash, and so tender was the smile which came to her lips. She seemed to be saying to him, "Wait, we shall have much to say to each other presently." The air of mystery, which seemed to envelop her, enveloped him also. The hard barriers of materialism seemed to melt away, and he had somehow entered the realm of romance and wonder.
Then her voice rang out over the audience—a voice that was rich in music. He did not understand a word she said, for she spoke in a language unknown to him. And yet her message reached him. Indeed, she seemed to be speaking only to him, only for him. And her every word thrilled him. As she spoke, he saw oppressed peoples. He saw men in chains, women crushed, trodden on, little children diseased, neglected, cursed. The picture of gay throngs, revelling in all the world could give them in pleasure, in music, in song, and wine, passed before his mind side by side with harrowing, numbing want and misery.