In the strangeness of it he made a mechanical movement to depart, picked up his stick, but Arnold was sitting holding his chin, wrapped in quiet interest, and took no notice.  The hymn stopped, and he found a few minutes’ respite, during which Ensign Sand addressed the meeting, unveiling each heart to its possessor; while Laura turned over the leaves of the hymn-book, looking, Lindsay was profoundly aware, for airs and verses most likely to help the siege of the Army to his untaken, sinful citadel.  There was time to bring him calmness enough to wonder whether these were the symptoms of emotional conversion, the sort of thing these people went in for, and he resolved to watch his state with interest.  Then, before he knew it, they were all down on their knees’ again, and Laura was praying; and he was not aware of the meaning of a single word that she said, only that her voice was threading itself in and out of his consciousness burdened with a passion that made it exquisite to him.  Her appeal lifted itself in the end into song, low and sweet.

“Down at the Cross where my Saviour died,
Down where for cleansing from sin I cried,
There to my heart was the blood applied,

                          Glory to His name!”

They let her sing it alone, even the tempting chorus, and when it was over Lindsay was almost certain that his were not the preliminary pangs of conversion by the methods of the Salvation Army.  Deliberately, however, he postponed further analysis of them until after the meeting was over.  He would be compelled then to go away, back to the club to dinner, or something; they would put out the lights and lock the place up; he thought of that.  He glanced at the lamps with a perception of the finality that would come when they were extinguished—­she would troop away with the others into the darkness—­and then at his watch to see how much time there was left.  More exhortation followed and more prayer; he was only aware that she did not speak.  She sat with her hand over her eyes, and Lindsay had an excited conviction that she was still occupying herself with him.  He looked round almost furtively to detect whether any one else was aware of it, this connection that she was blazoning between them, and then relapsed, staring at his hat, into a sense of ungrammatical iterations beating through a room full of stuffy smells.  When Laura spoke again his eye leaped to hers in a rapt effort to tell her that he perceived her intention.  That he should be grateful, that he should approve, was neither here nor there; the indispensable thing was that she should know him conscious, receptive.  She read three or four sacred verses, a throb of tender longing from the very Christ-heart, “Come unto me ...”  The words stole about the room like tears.  Then she would ask “all present,” she said, to engage for a moment in silent prayer.  There was a wordless interval, only the vague street noises surging past the door.  A thrill ran along the benches as Laura brought it to an end with sudden singing.  She was on her feet as the others raised their heads, breaking forth clear and jubilant.