waying, moving thousands.

It was a great crowd, a good many thousands altogether, men and women and
children and lads. It was dressed in its Sunday best, in attire which
fluctuated from bright tints of glaring newness to the dullness of
well-brushed and obtrusive shabbiness. There were every-looking men you
could think of and women and girls, young and old, pretty and plain and
repulsive. But it was a working-people crowd. There was no room among it
for the idlers. Probably it was not fashionable for them to be there.

And there was this about the crowd, which impressed Ned, everybody seemed
dissatisfied, everybody was seeking for a new idea, for something fresh.
There was no confidence in the Old, no content with what existed, no
common faith in what was to come. There was on many a face the same
misery that he had seen in Paddy's Market. There was no happiness, no
face free from care, excepting where lovers passed arm-in-arm. There was
the clash of ideas, the struggling of opinions, the blind leading the
blind. He saw the socialistic orator contending with a dozen others. Who
were the nostrum vendors? Which was the truth?

He turned round, agitated in thought, and his glance fell on Geisner, who
was standing with bent head, his hands behind him, ugly, impassive.
Geisner looked up quickly: "So you are doubting already," he remarked.

"I am not doubting," answered Ned. "I'm only thinking."

"Well?"

"It is a good thought, that Socialism," answered Ned slowly, as they
walked on. "There's nothing in it that doesn't seem fit for men to do.
It's a part with Nellie kissing that woman in the wet. What tries to make
us care for each other and prevent harm being done to one another can't
be very far wrong and what tries to break down the state of affairs that
is must be a little right. I don't care, either, whether it's right or
wrong. It feels right in my heart somehow and I'll stand by it if I'm the
only man left in the world to talk up for it."

Geisner linked his arm in Ned's.

"Remember this when you are sorrowful," he said. "It is only through Pain
that Good comes. It is only because the world suffers that Socialism is
possible. It is only as we conquer our own weaknesses that we can serve
the Cause."

They strolled on till they came to the terraced steps of the Gardens.
Before them stretched in all its wondrous glory the matchless panorama of
grove and garden, hill-closed sea and villa'd shore, the blue sky and