"Come now, friends, the lieutenant 'ere 'as lost 'er voice along o' you, an' tryin' to save yer! Can't you pipe up, some o' you? If some of you'd sing a bit with us, now, maybe we'd be able to take back one soul to Christ with us to-night. Can't one o' yer sing?"
"I will sing!" says some one near me—and it is Margarita!
I clutch her cape fiercely, but it slips off in my hand and she is at the drum, and the lane that opened for her closes for me, and I fight in vain to reach her—Oh, it must be a dream!
"I need Thee every hour...."
Ah-h-h! The crowd sighs with the old familiar joy, the magic of the golden voice slips like a veil over the cruel angles of their broken lives and mists and softens everything.
She has a slip of printed paper in her hand and reads seriously from it; some one holds the transparency near her shoulder for light—her white shoulders, bare in Trafalgar Square!
THEY ARE STILL AS DEATH, TRANCED IN THOSE LIQUID BELL-TONES
"I need Thee every hour,
Most gracious Lord,
No tender voice like thine
Can peace afford...."