se moments of unifying faith and confidence, that glowed so bravely
and never endured, were at once tantalizing and sustaining. She could
never believe but that ultimately she would not grasp and
hold--something....

Many people met her and liked her and sought to know more of her; Lady
Beach-Mandarin and Lady Viping were happy to be her social sponsors, the
Blenkers and the Chartersons met her out and woke up cautiously to this
new possibility; her emergence was rapid in spite of the various delays
and interruptions I have mentioned and she was soon in a position to
realize just how little one meets when one meets a number of people and
how little one hears when one has much conversation. Her mind was
presently crowded with confused impressions of pleasant men evading her
agreeably and making out of her gravities an opportunity for bright
sayings, and of women being vaguely solemn and quite indefinite.

She went into the circle of movements, was tried over by Mrs. Hubert
Plessington, she questioned this and that promoter of constructive
schemes, and instead of mental meat she was asked to come upon
committees and sounded for subscriptions. On several occasions, escorted
by Mr. Brumley--some instinct made her conceal or minimize his share in
these expeditions to her husband--she went as inconspicuously as
possible to the backs of public meetings in which she understood great
questions were being discussed or great changes inaugurated. Some
public figures she even followed up for a time, distrusting her first
impressions.

She became familiar with the manners and bearing of our platform class,
with the solemn dummy-like chairman or chairwoman, saying a few words,
the alert secretary or organizer, the prominent figures sitting with an
air of grave responsibility, generously acting an intelligent attention
to others until the moment came for them themselves to deliver. Then
with an ill-concealed relief some would come to the footlights, some
leap up in their places with a tenoring eagerness, some would be
facetious and some speak with neuralgic effort, some were impertinent,
some propitiatory, some dull, but all were--disappointing,
disappointing. God was not in any of them. A platform is no setting for
the shy processes of an honest human mind,--we are all strained to
artificiality in the excessive glare of attention that beats upon us
there. One does not exhibit opinions at a meeting, one acts them, the
very truth mus