It was after the hymn "There is a fountain filled with blood," during
the quietude of a speech, that Edwin Clayhanger, taking up an
evangelistic phrase in the speech, whispered to her:

"More blood!"

"What?" she asked, amazed by his ironical accent, which jarred on her
mood, and also by his familiar manner of leaning towards her and
dropping the words in her ear.

"Well," he said. "Look at it! It only wants the Ganges at the bottom of
the Square!"

Evidently for Edwin Clayhanger all religions were equally heathenish!
She was quite startled out of her amazement, and her response was an
almost humble entreaty not to make fun. The next moment she regretted
that she had not answered him with sharp firmness. She was somewhat out
of humour with him. He had begun by losing sight of Mr. Orgreave and
Janet--and of course it was hopeless to seek for them in those thronging
streets around St. Luke's Square. Then he had said to her, in a most
peculiar tone: "I hope you didn't catch cold in the rain the other
night," and she had not liked that. She had regarded it as a fault in
tact, almost as a sexual disloyalty on his part to refer at all to the
scene in the garden. Finally, his way of negotiating with the barrel man
for the use of two barrels had been lacking, for Hilda, in the qualities
of largeness and masterfulness; any one of the Orgreave boys would, she
was sure, have carried the thing off in a more worldly manner.

The climax of the service came with the singing of "When I survey the
wondrous Cross." The physical effect of it on Hilda was nearly
overwhelming. The terrible and sublime words seemed to surge upon her
charged with all the multitudinous significance of the crowd. She was
profoundly stirred, and to prevent an outburst of tears she shook her
head.

"What's the matter?" said Edwin Clayhanger.

"Clumsy dolt!" she thought. "Haven't you got enough sense to leave me
alone?" And she said aloud, passionately transforming her weakness into
ferocity: "That's the most splendid religious verse ever written! You
can say what you like. It's worth while believing anything, if you can
sing words like that and mean them!"

He agreed that the hymn was fine.

"Do you know who wrote it?" she demanded threateningly.

He did not. She was delighted.

"Dr. Watts, of course!" she said, with a scornful sneer. What did Janet
mean by saying that he had read simply everything?

IV

An episode which supervened close to the