But the voice below flowed on; point after point came briskly out; the atmosphere warmed; and presently this first impression passed into one wholly different—­nay, at the opposite pole.  Gradually the girl’s ardent sense—­informed, perhaps, more richly than most women’s with the memories of history and literature, for in her impatient way she had been at all times a quick, omnivorous reader—­awoke to the peculiar conditions, the special thrill, attaching to the place and its performers.  The philosopher derides it; the man of letters out of the House talks of it with a smile as a “Ship of Fools”; both, when occasion offers, passionately desire a seat in it; each would give his right hand to succeed in it.

Why?  Because here after all is power—­here is the central machine.  Here are the men who, both by their qualities and their defects, are to have for their span of life the leading—­or the wrecking?—­of this great fate-bearing force, this “weary Titan” we call our country.  Here things are not only debated, but done—­lamely or badly, perhaps, but still done—­which will affect our children’s children; which link us to the Past; which carry us on safely or dangerously to a Future only the gods know.  And in this passage, this chequered, doubtful passage from thinking to doing, an infinite savour and passion of life is somehow disengaged.  It penetrates through the boredom, through all the failure, public and personal; it enwraps the spectacle and the actors; it carries and supports patriot and adventurer alike.

Ideas, perceptions of this kind—­the first chill over—­stole upon and conquered Marcella.  Presently it was as though she had passed into Wharton’s place, was seeing with his eyes, feeling with his nerves.  It would be a success this speech—­it was a success!  The House was gained, was attentive.  A case long familiar to it in portions and fragments, which had been spoilt by violence and discredited by ignorance, was being presented to it with all the resources of a great talent—­with brilliancy, moderation, practical detail—­moderation above all!  From the slight historical sketch, with which the speech opened, of the English “working day,” the causes and the results of the Factory Acts—­through the general description of the present situation, of the workman’s present hours, opportunities and demands, the growth of the desire for State control, the machinery by which it was to be enforced, and the effects it might be expected to have on the workman himself, on the great army of the “unemployed,” on wages, on production, and on the economic future of England—­the speaker carried his thread of luminous speech, without ever losing his audience for an instant.  At every point he addressed himself to the smoothing of difficulties, to the propitiation of fears; and when, after the long and masterly handling of detail, he came to his peroration, to the bantering of capitalist terrors, to the vindication of the workman’s claim to