 Jesus!'

Other men had been stealing in while he was speaking. The little room was nearly full. It was strange, the contrast between the squalid modernness of the scene, with its incongruous sights and sounds, the Club-room, painted in various hideous shades of cinnamon and green, the smoke, the lines and groups of working-men in every sort of working dress, the occasional rumbling of huge waggons past the window, the click of glasses and cups in the refreshment bar outside, and this stir of spiritual passion which any competent observer might have felt sweeping through the little crowd as Robert spoke, connecting what was passing there with all that is sacred and beautiful in the history of the world.

After another silence a young fellow, in a shabby velvet coat, stood up. He was commonly known among his fellow-potters as 'the hartist,' because of his long hair, his little affectations of dress, and his æsthetic susceptibilities generally. The wits of the Club made him their target, but the teasing of him that went on was more or less tempered by the knowledge that in his own queer way he had brought up and educated two young sisters almost from infancy, and that his sweetheart[Pg 555] had been killed before his eyes a year before in a railway accident.

'I dun know,' he said in a high treble voice, 'I dun know whether I speak for anybody but myself—very likely not; but what I do know,' and he raised his right hand and shook it with a gesture of curious felicity, 'is this—what Mr. Elsmere starts I'll join; where he goes I'll go; what's good enough for him's good enough for me. He's put a new heart and a new stomach into me, and what I've got he shall have, whenever it pleases 'im to call for it! So if he wants to run a new thing against or alongside the old uns, and he wants me to help him with it—I don't know as I'm very clear what he's driving at, nor what good I can do 'im—but when Tom Wheeler's asked for he'll be there!'

A deep murmur, rising almost into a shout of assent ran through the little assembly. Robert bent forward, his eye glistening, a moved acknowledgment in his look and gesture. But in reality a pang ran through the fiery soul. It was 'the personal estimate,' after all, that was shaping their future and his and the idealist
