g he disappeared beyond the speaker's
tribune, and the instant after reappeared once more, coming up the
steps. He reached his place--she could see His profile beneath her and
slightly to the left, pure and keen as the blade of a knife, beneath His
white hair. He lifted one white-furred sleeve, made a single motion, and
with a surge and a rumble, the ten thousand were seated. He motioned
again and with a roar they were on their feet.

Again there was a silence. He stood now, perfectly still, His hands laid
together on the rail, and His face looking steadily before Him; it
seemed as if He who had drawn all eyes and stilled all sounds were
waiting until His domination were complete, and there was but one will,
one desire, and that beneath His hand. Then He began to speak....

* * * * *

In this again, as Mabel perceived afterwards, there was no precise or
verbal record within her of what he said; there was no conscious process
by which she received, tested, or approved what she heard. The nearest
image under which she could afterwards describe her emotions to herself,
was that when He spoke it was she who was speaking. Her own thoughts,
her predispositions, her griefs, her disappointment, her passion, her
hopes--all these interior acts of the soul known scarcely even to
herself, down even, it seemed, to the minutest whorls and eddies of
thought, were, by this man, lifted up, cleansed, kindled, satisfied and
proclaimed. For the first time in her life she became perfectly aware of
what human nature meant; for it was her own heart that passed out upon
the air, borne on that immense voice. Again, as once before for a few
moments in Paul's House, it seemed that creation, groaning so long, had
spoken articulate words at last--had come to growth and coherent thought
and perfect speech. Yet then He had spoken to men; now it was Man
Himself speaking. It was not one man who spoke there, it was Man--Man
conscious of his origin, his destiny, and his pilgrimage between, Man
sane again after a night of madness--knowing his strength, declaring his
law, lamenting in a voice as eloquent as stringed instruments his own
failure to correspond. It was a soliloquy rather than an oration. Rome
had fallen, English and Italian streets had run with blood, smoke and
flame had gone up to heaven, because man had for an instant sunk back to
the tiger. Yet it was done, cried the great voice, and there was no
repentance; it was done, and ages hence ma