They are still as death, tranced in those liquid bell-tones. The great drum shivers, as it shivered, of old, a tom-tom, across the African desert; the old, primal thrill creeps through my blood—good heavens, is this fear? Is it superstition? Is it religion?
"I need Thee—oh, I need Thee!"
The woman sobs like a damned soul beside me; a man coughs huskily. Will no one stop her? They have wedged me so that I cannot breathe, I feel them gathering from the nearby streets. And there she stands, coral like blood on her bare neck, the scarf fallen from her black hair, the plea of all humanity pouring in a great anguished stream of melody out of her white throat.
"I need Thee oh, I need Thee,
Ev'ry hour I need Thee!"
The tambourine shudders barbarically across the smooth flood of her voice: it is the tingling crash of the Greek Mysteries—and I had thought it vulgar!
I hear hansoms jingling up—what will Roger say? He would kill them all, if he could, I know, and yet no one there would hurt a hair of her head—and does she not belong to the public?
God knows the poor devils need something—is it that, then? Is it a real thing? Do people fight for it like that? For this imperious Voice is agonising for something and the drum is the beat of its heart.
"Gawd's frightful hard on women," the poor creature beside me moans, and lo, the little dumb lieutenant is by her side miraculously, and like a shifting kaleidoscope the crowd lets them through and she kneels, shaking, by the drum.
Their white faces heap in layers before me; drawn, wolfish, brutal in the flaring lights they peer and gasp and sob, like uncouth inhabitants of another world—wait a bit, Jerry, it is your world, just the same, and perhaps you are responsible for it? Ugh!
"I need Thee ..."