With Barmby’s entrance disillusion gave way before the ardours of flesh and spirit.  The whole hour through she never took her eyes from him.  His smooth, pink face, with its shining moustache, embodied her ideal of manly beauty; his tall figure inflamed her senses; the words that fell from his lips sounded to her with oracular impressiveness, conveying a wisdom before which she bowed, and a noble enthusiasm to which she responded in fervent exaltation.  And she had been wont to ridicule this man, to join in mockery of his eloquence with a conceited wanton such as Nancy Lord!  No, it never came from her heart; it was moral cowardice; from the first she had recognised Samuel Barmby’s infinite superiority to the ignoble, the impure girl who dared to deride him.

He saw her; their eyes met once, and again, and yet again.  He knew that she alone in the audience could comprehend his noble morality, grasp the extent of his far-sighted speculations.  To her he spoke.  And in his deep glowing heart he could not but thank her for such evidence of sympathy.

There followed a tedious debate, a muddy flow of gabble and balderdash.  It was over by ten o’clock.  With jealous eyes she watched her hero surrounded by people who thought, poor creatures, that they were worthy of offering him congratulations.  At a distance she lingered.  And behold, his eye once more fell upon her!  He came out from among the silly chatterers, and walked towards her.

’You played me a trick, Miss.  Morgan.  I should never have allowed you to come all this way to hear me.’

‘If I had come ten times the distance, I should have been repaid!’

His round eyes gloated upon the flattery.

’Well, well, I mustn’t pretend that I think the lecture worthless.  But you might have had the manuscript to read.  Are you quite alone?  Then I must take care of you.  It’s a wretched night; we’ll have a cab to King’s Cross.’

He said it with a consciousness of large-handed generosity.  Jessica’s heart leapt and throbbed.

She was by his side in the vehicle.  Her body touched his.  She felt his warm breath as he talked.  In all too short a time they reached the railway station.

‘Did you come this way?  Have you a ticket?  Leave that to me.’

Again largely generous, he strode to the booking-office.

They descended and stood together upon the platform, among hurrying crowds, in black fumes that poisoned the palate with sulphur.  This way and that sped the demon engines, whirling lighted waggons full of people.  Shrill whistles, the hiss and roar of steam, the bang, clap, bang of carriage-doors, the clatter of feet on wood and stone —­all echoed and reverberated from a huge cloudy vault above them.  High and low, on every available yard of wall, advertisements clamoured to the eye:  theatres, journals, soaps, medicines, concerts, furniture, wines, prayer-meetings—­all the produce and refuse of civilisation announced in staring letters, in daubed effigies, base, paltry, grotesque.  A battle-ground of advertisements, fitly chosen amid subterranean din and reek; a symbol to the gaze of that relentless warfare which ceases not, night and day, in the world above.