It was as if he had repeated part of the creed in the performance of his office.  Then he turned and bent gravely to Lindsay.  “Shall we go now?” he whispered, and the two made their way to the door, leaving a silence behind them which Lindsay imagined, on the part of Ensign Sand at least, to be somewhat resentful.  As they passed out, a voice recovered itself and cried, “Hallelujah!” It was Laura’s.  And all the way to the club—­Arnold was dining with him there—­Lindsay listened to his friend’s analysis of religious appeal to the emotions, but chiefly heard that clear music above a sordid din, “Hallelujah!” “Hallelujah!”

CHAPTER IV.

When Alicia Livingstone, almost believing she liked it, drove to Number Three, Lal Behari’s Lane and left cards upon Miss Hilda Howe, she was only partially rewarded.  Through the plaster gate-posts, badly in want of repair and bearing, sunk in one of them, a marble slab announcing “Residence with Board,” she perceived the squalid attempt the place made at respectability, the servants in dirty livery salaaming curiously, the over-fed squirrel in a cage in the door, the pair of damaged wicker chairs in the porch suggesting the easiest intercourse after dinner, the general discoloration.  She observed with irritation that it was a down-at-heels shrine for such a divinity, in spite of its six dusty crotons in crumbling plaster urns, but the irritation was rather at her own repulsion to the place than at any inconsistency it presented.  What she demanded and expected of herself was that Number Three, Lal Behari’s Lane should be pleasing, interesting, acceptable on its merits as a cheap Calcutta boarding-house.  She found herself so unable to perceive its merits that it was almost a relief to see nothing of Miss Howe either; Hilda had gone to rehearsal, to the “dance-house,” the servant said, eyeing the unusual landau.  Alicia rolled back into streets with Christian names distressed by an uncertainty as to whether her visit had been a disappointment or an escape.  By the next day, however, she was well pulled together in favour of the former conclusion—­she could nearly always persuade herself of such things in time—­and wrote a frank, sweet little note in her picturesque hand—­she never joined more than two syllables—­to say how sorry she had been, and would Miss Howe come to lunch on Friday.  “I should love to make it dinner,” she said to herself, as she sealed the envelope, “but before one knows how she will behave in connection with the men—­I suppose one must think of the other people.”

It was Friday, and Hilda was lunching.  The two had met among the faint-tinted draperies of Alicia’s drawing-room—­there was something auroral even about the mantlepiece—­a little like diplomatists using a common tongue native to neither of them.  Perhaps Alicia drew the conventions round her with the greater fluency; Hilda had more to cover, but was less particular about it.  The