Bennett was no orator.  He was a plain man, ennobled by the training of religious dissent, at the same time indifferently served often by an imperfect education.  But the very simplicity and homeliness of its expression gave additional weight to this first avowal of a strong conviction that the time had come when the Labour party must have separateness and a leader if it were to rise out of insignificance; to this frank renunciation of whatever personal claims his own past might have given him; and to the promise of unqualified support to the policy of the younger man, in both its energetic and conciliatory aspects.  He threw out a little not unkindly indignation, if one may be allowed the phrase, in the direction of Wilkins—­who in the middle of the speech abruptly walked out—­and before he sat down, the close attention, the looks, the cheers, the evident excitement of the men sitting about him,—­amongst whom were two-thirds of the whole Labour representation in Parliament—­made it clear to the House that the speech marked an epoch not only in the career of Harry Wharton, but in the parliamentary history of the great industrial movement.

The white-bearded bore under the gallery, whom Wharton had pointed out to Marcella, got up as Bennett subsided.  The house streamed out like one man.  Bennett, exhausted by the heat and the effort, mopped his brow with his red handkerchief, and, in the tension of fatigue, started as he felt a touch upon his arm.  Wharton was bending over to him—­perfectly white, with a lip he in vain tried to steady.

“I can’t thank you,” he said; “I should make a fool of myself.”

Bennett nodded pleasantly, and presently both were pressing into the out-going crowd, avoiding each other with the ineradicable instinct of the Englishman.

Wharton did not recover his self-control completely till, after an ordeal of talk and handshaking in the lobby, he was on his way to the Ladies’ Gallery.  Then in a flash he found himself filled with the spirits, the exhilaration, of a schoolboy.  This wonderful experience behind him!—­and upstairs, waiting for him, those eyes, that face!  How could he get her to himself somehow for a moment—­and dispose of that Craven girl?

“Well!” he said to her joyously, as she turned round in the darkness of the Gallery.

But she was seized with sudden shyness, and he felt, rather than saw, the glow of pleasure and excitement which possessed her.

“Don’t let’s talk here,” she said.  “Can’t we go out?  I am melted!”

“Yes, of course!  Come on to the terrace.  It’s a divine evening, and we shall find our party there.  Well, Miss Craven, were you interested?”

Edith smiled demurely.

“I thought it a good debate,” she said.

“Confound these Venturist prigs!” was Wharton’s inward remark as he led the way.

CHAPTER IX.

“How enchanting!” cried Marcella, as they emerged on the terrace, and river, shore, and sky opened upon them in all the thousand-tinted light and shade of a still and perfect evening.  “Oh, how hot we were—­and how badly you treat us in those dens!”