He looked across the hall at her.  Their eyes met.

IV

When he went over to her side at the end of the meeting she glowered at him and said, “Oh, it’s you!” as if it was the first time she had set eyes upon him that evening; but he knew that that was just because she was shy, and he shook hands rather slowly and looked her full in the face as he said he had liked the speeches so that she might see she couldn’t come it over him.  And he asked if he might see her home.

She swallowed, and pushed up her chin, as if trying to rise to some tremendous occasion, and then pulled herself together, and with an air of having found a loophole of escape, enquired, “But where are you stopping?” and when he made answer that he was staying at the Caledonian Hotel, she exclaimed in a tone of relief, “Ah, but I live at Hume Park Square out by the Meadows!”

“I want to see you home,” he said inflexibly.

“Oh, if you want the walk!” she answered resignedly.  “Though you’ve a queer taste in walks, for the streets are terrible underfoot.  But I suppose you’re shut up all day at your work.  You’ll just have to sit down and wait till I’ve checked the literature and handed in the takings.  I doubt yon stout body in plum-coloured velveteen who bought R.J.  Campbell on the Social Evil with such an air of condescension has paid me with a bad threepenny-bit.  Aren’t folks the limit?” She was so full of bitterness against the fraudulent body in plum-coloured velveteen that she forgot her shyness and looked into his eyes to appeal for sympathy.  “Ah, well!” she said, stiffening again, “I’ll be back in a minute.”

He leaned against a pillar and waited.  The hall became empty, became melancholy; mysteriously and insultingly its emptiness seemed to summarise the proceedings that had just ended.  It was as if the place were waiting till he and the few darkly dressed women who still stood about chewing the speeches were gone, and would then enact a satire on the evening; the rows of seats which turned their polished brown surfaces towards the platform with an effect of mock attentiveness would jeeringly imitate the audience, the chairs that had been left higgledy-piggledy on the platform would parody the speakers.  And doubtless, if there is a beneficent Providence that really picks the world over for opportunities of kindliness, halls which are habitually let out for political meetings are allowed means of relieving their feelings which are forbidden to other collections of bricks and mortar.  But he mustn’t say that to Ellen.  To her political meetings were plainly sacred rituals, and in any case he was not sure whether she laughed at things.