“Quite so,” replied Wilson.  “A crowd is generous and easily swayed.  A theatrical audience of scalliwags and thieves will howl applause at the triumph of virtue and the downfall of the villain; and each separate member will go out into the street and begin to practise villainy and say ‘to hell with virtue.’  If last night’s meeting could have polled on the spot, they would have been as one man.  To-day they’re scattered and each individual revises his excited opinion.  Your hard-bitten Radical would sooner have a self-made man than an aristocrat to represent him in Parliament; but, damn it all, he’d sooner have an aristocrat than an ex-convict.”

“But who the devil told you I’m an aristocrat?” cried Paul.

Wilson laughed.  “Who wants to be told such an obvious thing?  Anyhow, you’ve only got to look and you’ll see how the votes are piling tip.”

Paul looked and saw that Wilson spoke truly.  Then he reflected that Wilson and the others who had worked so strenuously for him had no part in his own personal depression.  They deserved a manifestation of interest, also expressions of gratitude.  So Paul pulled himself together and went amongst them and was responsive to their prophecies of victory.

Then just as the last votes were being counted, an official attendant came in with a letter for Paul.  It had been brought by messenger.  The writing on the envelope was Jane’s.  He tore it open and read.

Mr. Finn is dying.  He has had a stroke.  The doctor says he can’t live through the night.  Come as soon as you can.  Jane.

Outside the Town Hall the wide street was packed with people.  Men surged tip to the hollow square of police guarding the approach to the flight of steps and the great entrance door.  Men swarmed about the electric standards above the heads of their fellows.  Men rose in a long tier with their backs to the shop-fronts on the opposite side of the road.  In spite of the raw night the windows were open and the arc lights revealed a ghostly array of faces looking down on the mass below, whose faces in their turn were lit up by the more yellow glare streaming from the doors and uncurtained windows of the Town Hall.  In the lobby behind the glass doors could be seen a few figures going and coming, committee-men, journalists, officials.  A fine rain began to fall, but the crowd did not heed it.  The mackintosh capes of the policemen glistened.  It was an orderly crowd, held together by tense excitement:  all eyes fixed on the silent illuminated building whence the news would come.  Across one window on the second floor was a large white patch, blank and sphinx-like.  At right angles to one end of the block ran the High Street and the tall, blazing trams passed up and down and all eyes in the trams strained for a transient glimpse of the patch, hoping that it would flare out into message.

Presently a man was seen to dash from the interior of the hall into the lobby, casting words at the waiting figures, who clamoured eagerly and disappeared within, just as the man broke through the folding doors and appeared at the top of the steps beneath the portico.  The great crowd surged and groaned, and the word was quickly passed from rank to rank.