she instantly swept aside.  “At least I think I can make you see why. (If you’re sure he can’t hear?) Why, it’s just this—­Pellerinism is in danger of becoming a truism.  Oh, it’s an awful thing to say!  But then I’m not afraid of saying awful things!  I rather believe it’s my mission.  What I mean is, that we’re getting into the way of taking Pellerin for granted—­as we do the air we breathe.  We don’t sufficiently lead our conscious life in him—­we’re gradually letting him become subliminal.”  She swayed closer to the young man, and he saw that she was making a graceful attempt to throw her explanatory net over his companion, who, evading Mrs. Bain’s hospitable signal, had cautiously wedged himself into a seat between Bernald and the wall.

“Did you hear what I was saying, Mr. Winterman? (Yes, I know who you are, of course!) Oh, well, I don’t really mind if you did.  I was talking about you—­about you and Pellerin.  I was explaining to Mr. Bernald that what we need at this very minute is a Pellerin revival; and we need some one like you—­to whom his message comes as a wonderful new interpretation of life—­to lead the revival, and rouse us out of our apathy. ...

“You see,” she went on winningly, “it’s not only the big public that needs it (of course their Pellerin isn’t ours!) It’s we, his disciples, his interpreters, who discovered him and gave him to the world—­we, the Chosen People, the Custodians of the Sacred Books, as Howland Wade calls us—­it’s we, who are in perpetual danger of sinking back into the old stagnant ideals, and practising the Seven Deadly Virtues; it’s we who need to count our mercies, and realize anew what he’s done for us, and what we ought to do for him!  And it’s for that reason that I urged Mr. Wade to speak here, in the very inner sanctuary of Pellerinism, exactly as he would speak to the uninitiated—­to repeat, simply, his Kenosha lecture, ’What Pellerinism means’; and we ought all, I think, to listen to him with the hearts of little children—­just as you will, Mr. Winterman—­as if he were telling us new things, and we—­”

“Alice, dear—­” Mrs. Bain murmured with a deprecating gesture; and Howland Wade, emerging between the palms, took the centre of the platform.

A pang of commiseration shot through Bernald as he saw him there, so innocent and so exposed.  His plump pulpy body, which made his evening dress fall into intimate and wrapper-like folds, was like a wide surface spread to the shafts of irony; and the mild ripples of his voice seemed to enlarge the vulnerable area as he leaned forward, poised on confidential finger-tips, to say persuasively:  “Let me try to tell you what Pellerinism means.”

Bernald moved restlessly in his seat.  He had the obscure sense of being a party to something not wholly honourable.  He ought not to have come; he ought not to have let his companion come.  Yet how could he have done otherwise?  John Pellerin’s secret was his own.  As long as he chose to remain John Winterman it was no one’s business to gainsay him; and Bernald’s scruples were really justifiable only in respect of his own presence on the scene.  But even in this connection he ceased to feel them as soon as Howland Wade began to speak.