“I am so wondrously saved from sin,
Jesus so sweetly abides within;
There at the Cross where he took me in,

                                  Glory to His Name.”

She smiled as she sang.  It was a happy, confident smile, and it was plain that she longed to believe it the glad reflection of spiritual experience of many who heard her.  Lindsay’s perception of this was immediate and keen, and when her eyes rested for an instant of glad inquiry upon his in the chartered intimacy of her calling, he felt a pang of compunction.  It was a formless reproach, too vague for anything like a charge, but it came nearest to defining itself in the idea that he had gone too far—­he who had not left his seat.  When the hymn was finished, and Ensign Sand said, “The meeting is now open for testimonies,” he knew that all her hope was upon him, though she looked at the screen above his head, and he sat abashed, with a prodigal sense surging through him of what he would rejoice to do for her in compensation.  In the little chilly silence that followed he surprised his own eyes moist with disappointment—­it had all been so anxious and so vain—­and he felt relief and gratitude when the man who beat the drum stood up and announced that he had been saved for eleven years, with details about how badly he stood in need of it when it happened.

“Hallelujah!” said Ensign Sand cheerfully, with a meretricious air of hearing it for the first time.  “Any more?” And a Norwegian sailor lurched shamefacedly upon his feet.  He had a couple of inches of straggling yellow beard all round his face, and twirled a battered straw hat.

“I haf to say only dis word.  I goin’ sdop by Jesus.  Long time I subbose I sdop by Jesus.  I subbose——­”

“Glory be to God!” remarked Ensign Sand again, spiking the guns of the Duke’s Own, who were inclined to be amused.  “That will do, thank you.  Now, is there nobody else?  Speak up, friends.  It’ll do you no harm, none whatever; it’ll do you that much good you’ll be surprised.  Now, who’ll be the next to say a word for Jesus?” She was nodding encouragement at the negro cook as if she knew him for a wavering soul, and he, sunk in his gleaming white collar, was aware, in silent, smiling misery, that the expectations of the meeting were toward him.  Laura had again hidden her eyes in her hand.  The negro fingered his watch-chain foolishly, and the prettiest of the East Indian half-castes tried hard to disguise her perception that an African, in his best clothes, under conviction of sin, was the funniest thing in the world.  The silence seemed to focus itself upon the cook, who fumbled at his coat collar and cleared his voice.  It was a shock to all concerned when Stephen Arnold, picking up his hat, got upon his feet instead.

“I also,” he said, “would offer my humble testimony to the grace of God—­with all my heart.”