by the time she had
finished her programme the thunderbolt, the classic, the eternal
thunderbolt, had fallen, and Fergus Appleton was in love. Tommy began
her unconscious depredations with "Near Woodstock Town" and "Phillida
Flouts Me," added fuel to the flames with "My Heart's in the
Highlands" and "Charlie Is My Darling," and reduced his heart to ashes
with "Allan Water" and "Has Sorrow Thy Young Days Shaded?" The smile
began it, but it was tears that worked the final miracle, though
moisture very rarely has this effect on fires of any sort.

Tommy was tired and a bit disheartened; Appleton, the only responsive
person in the audience, was seated in a far corner of the room,
completely hidden behind a lady of formidable width and thickness, so
the singer could not be expected to feel the tidal waves of
appreciation he was sending toward her, although they ran so high at
one moment that he could have risen to his feet and begged her to
elope with him. The rest of her hearers sat heavily, stodgily in their
seats without moving a muscle, mental, emotional, or physical. They
had no private sitting-rooms, and they might as well be where they
were as anywhere else; that was the idea they conveyed in every
feature of their expressionless faces. An old gentleman in the front
row left the room during the last song on the programme, and Appleton
was beset by, and resisted, a vulgar temptation to put out his foot
and trip him up in the doorway. When Tommy sang:

"Has hope, like the bird in the story,
That flitted from tree to tree
With the talisman's glitt'ring glory,
Has hope been that bird to thee?
On branch after branch alighting,
The gem did she still display,
And when nearest and most inviting,
Then waft the fair gem away."

"Yes, yes, a thousand times yes," answered Fergus Appleton's heart,
for the first time in his life conscious of loneliness, lack of
purpose, lack of anchorage, lack of responsibilities, lack of
everything he had never wanted before, but wanted desperately all at
once, and quite independent of logic.

He slipped out of the door and let the scattered units in the audience
assemble, pass him, and drift down the corridor toward the office and
lounge. To his astonishment and anger they dropped shillings on the
plate, and the young people sixpences and, great Heavens! ev