e
Californian seemed to tell Julian a startling thing or two. The general
rose, the senator helped Lucian to his feet. The four came close about
the news bearer and he told more. Ramsey could almost feel his mention
of the bishop and then of Basile. Lucian asked a question or two and the
five came down the aisle, one pair leading, the other following, and
Julian between, alone, overpeering all sitters, with a splendid air of
being commander and in the saddle.

XLV

APPLAUSE

Diffidence! Hugh had spoken of diffidence--in himself--in the twins.
Could Julian really be hiding such a thing behind such a mask? Ramsey
wondered.

Every eye was on him and again the floor thundered, shaming her,
flattering him. As he came on, the exhorter began to put out an arm, to
speak and to rise, but the cub pilot blandly intervened and Julian
ignored him. For there both brothers came face to face with the first
mate. He had entered where Gilmore went out, and now passed them with a
stare like their own, fire for fire, and at close quarters began to
accost the exhorter and his two adherents.

They rose, and with evident change of meaning thunder came again, though
not for them. The departing twins and their triple escort; the exhorter
and the four about him; Ramsey, Joy, and the returned Gilmore, who just
then touched her shoulder and whispered something to which she replied
with quick nods of consent--all these groups lifted their gaze, with the
whole company's, to the curtained stage.

Diffidence! oh, where _was_ diffidence? Hugh had stepped in behind the
footlights and was standing and looking out across them as foursquare
and unsmiling as a gravestone.

Their light was on his brow, whose frown smote her with foreboding. Half
folded he held a slip of paper as if about to give official notice of
some grave matter, and his aggressive eyes, that seemed to her to look a
greater distance away from a greater distance within than ever before,
were fixed on one man. Absolute silence fell. And thereupon, to the
open-mouthed amazement of the audience, with his stare yet on that one
face, and in a voice that seemed octaves below hers, he began to sing
straight at the exhorter:

"Do you belong to Gideon's ban'?"

A shout of laughter, a rain of clappings, a thunder of canes and feet.
Sitters bumped up and down. They were safe home again in nonsense and
were glad. Ramsey's laugh was like a dancer's bells though under cover
of