red-haired rebel; he answered with almost savage irony:

"Strangely enough, by that Being to mention whom you object--working
through the medium of the best."

"High-Priest! Look at that girl slinking along there, with her eye on
us; suppose, instead of withdrawing your garment, you went over and
talked to her, got her to tell you what she really felt and thought,
you'd find things that would astonish you. At bottom, mankind is
splendid. And they're raised, sir, by the aspiration that's in all
of them. Haven't you ever noticed that public sentiment is always in
advance of the Law?"

"And you," said Miltoun, "are the man who is never on the side of the
majority?"

The champion of lost causes uttered a short laugh.

"Not so logical as all that," he answered; "the wind still blows; and
Life's not a set of rules hung up in an office. Let's see, where are
we?" They had been brought to a stand-still by a group on the pavement
in front of the Queen's Hall: "Shall we go in, and hear some music, and
cool our tongues?"

Miltoun nodded, and they went in.

The great lighted hall, filled with the faint bluefish vapour from
hundreds of little rolls of tobacco leaf, was crowded from floor to
ceiling.

Taking his stand among the straw-hatted throng, Miltoun heard that
steady ironical voice behind him:

"Profanum vulgus! Come to listen to the finest piece of music ever
written! Folk whom you wouldn't trust a yard to know what was good for
them! Deplorable sight, isn't it?"

He made no answer. The first slow notes of the seventh Symphony of
Beethoven had begun to steal forth across the bank of flowers; and, save
for the steady rising of that bluefish vapour, as it were incense burnt
to the god of melody, the crowd had become deathly still, as though one
mind, one spirit, possessed each pale face inclined towards that music
rising and falling like the sighing of the winds, that welcome from
death the freed spirits of the beautiful.

When the last notes had died away, he turned and walked out.

"Well," said the voice behind him, "hasn't that shown you how things
swell and grow; how splendid the world is?"

Miltoun smiled.

"It has shown me how beautiful the world can be made by a great man."

And suddenly, as if the music had loosened some band within him, he
began to pour forth words:

"Look at the crowd in this street, Courtier, which of all crowds in
the whole world can best afford to be left to itself; secure from