Those who did note the arrivals saw that they were strangers to the assembly.  They saw something else, also, though they could not have told what it was.  The two women, one young, one of middle age, were plainly dressed in cheap suits of dark serge, such as many of the working-women were wearing.  Their hats were of the simplest and most inexpensive design, though lacking any of the commonplace finery to be seen everywhere throughout the room.  But there was about the pair an undeniable since unconcealable air of difference, of refinement if it were only in the manner in which they slipped into their seats and fixed their eyes upon the speaker, with no glances to right or left.  The eyes which noted them noted also that both were possessed of faces such as need no accessories of environment to make them hold the gaze of all about them.

“Settlement folks,” guessed one girl to another, with a slight curl of the lip.

“Sh-h—­!  Who cares what they are when he’s talkin’?” gave back the other—­and settled again to listening.

Brown had seen the newcomers, but they were far back in the room, which was by no means brilliantly lighted, and beneath the shadows of their hats there was for him no hint of acquaintance.  He therefore proceeded, untrammelled by a knowledge which would surely have been his undoing had he possessed it at that stage of the evening.  He went on interesting, touching, appealing to his listeners, waging war upon their hearts with all the skill known to the valiant, forceful speaker.  Yet such was his apparent simplicity of method that he seemed to all but two of those who heard him to be merely talking with them about the things which concerned them.

His was not the ordinary effort of the amateur social worker—­such though he felt himself to be.  He had not a word to say to his hearers about “conditions”; he gave them no impression of having studied them and their environment till he knew more about it all than they did—­or thought he did.  He brought to them only what they felt, consciously or unconsciously, to be an intimate understanding of the human heart, whether it were found beating under the coarse garments of the factory hand or the silken ones of the “swells up-town.”  Gently but searchingly he showed them their own hearts, showed them the ugly things, the strange things, the wonderful things, of their own hearts—­and then, when he had those hearts beating heavily and painfully before him, applied the healing balm of his message.  Hard eyes grew soft, weary faces brightened, despairing mouths set with new resolve, and when the hour ended there seemed a clearer atmosphere, a different spirit, in the crowded room, than that which earlier had pervaded it.

“Say, ain’t he what I told you?” One girl, passing near the two strangers as the company dispersed, inquired of another.  “Don’t it seem like he knows what you don’t know yourself about how you’re feelin’?”