Holderness leaned back in his worn leather chair and shouted with laughter. He treated with absolute indifference the white anger in Macheson’s face.

“Victor,” he cried, “don’t look at me as though you wanted to punch my head. Down on your knees, man, and pray for a sense of humour. It’s the very salt of life.”

“That’s all very well,” Macheson answered, “but I can’t exactly see——”

“That’s because you’re deficient,” Holderness shouted, wiping the tears from his eyes. “I haven’t laughed so much for ages. Here you come from the East to the West, with all the world’s tragedy tearing at your heart, flowing from your lips, a flagellator, a hater of the people to whom you speak, seeking only to strike and to wound, and they accept you as a new sensation! They bare their back to your whip! They have made you the fashion! Oh! this funny, funny world of ours!”

Macheson smiled grimly.

“I’ll grant you the elements of humour in the situation,” he said, “but you can scarcely expect me to appreciate it, can you? I never came here to play the mountebank, to provide a new sensation for these tired dolls of Society. Dick, do you think St. Paul could have opened their eyes?”

Holderness shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he declared. “They’re a difficult class—you see, they have pluck, and a sort of fantastic philosophy which goes with breeding. They’re not easily scared.”

Macheson thought of his friend’s words later in the afternoon, when he stood on the slightly raised platform of the fashionable room where his lectures were given. Not a chair was empty. Macheson, as he entered, gazed long and steadily into those rows of tired, distinguished-looking faces, and felt in the atmosphere the delicate wave of perfume shaken from their clothes—the indescribable effect of femininity. There were men there, too, mostly as escorts, correctly dressed, bored, vacuous, from intent rather than lack of intelligence. Macheson himself, carelessly dressed from design, his fine figure ill-clad, with untidy boots and shock hair, felt his anger slowly rising as he marked the stir which his coming had caused. He to be the showman of such a crowd! It was maddening! That day he spoke to them without even the ghost of a smile parting his lips. He sought to create no sympathy. He cracked his whip with the cool deliberation of a Russian executioner.

... “I was asked the other day,” he remarked, “by an enterprising journalist, what made me decide to come here and deliver these lectures to you. I did not tell him. It is because I wanted to speak to the most ignorant class in Christendom. You are that class. If you have intelligence, you make it the servant of your whims. If you have imagination, you use it to enlarge the sphere of your vices. You are worse than the ostrich who buries his head in the sand—you prefer to go underground altogether....

“As you sit here—with every tick of your jewelled watches, out in the world of which in your sublime selfishness you know nothing, a child dies, a woman is given to sin, a man’s heart is broken. What do you care? What do you know of that infernal, that everlasting tragedy of sin and suffering that seethes around you? Why should you care? Your life is attuned to the most pagan philosophy which all the ages of sin have evolved. You have sunk so low that you are content to sit and listen to the story of your ignominy....”

What fascination was it that kept them in their places? Holderness, who was sitting in the last row, fully expected to see them leave their seats and stream out; Macheson himself would not have been surprised. His voice had no particular charm, his words were simple words of abuse, he attempted no rhetorical flourishes, nor any of the tricks of oratory. He stood there like a disgusted schoolmaster lecturing a rebellious and backward school. Holderness, when he saw that no one left, chuckled to himself. Macheson, aware that his powers of invective were spent, suddenly changed his tone.

Consciously or unconsciously, he told them, every one was seeking to fashion his life according to some hidden philosophy, some unrealized ideal. With religion, as it was commonly understood, he had, in that place at any rate, nothing to do. Even the selfish drifting down the stream of idle pleasures, which constituted life for most of them, was the passive acceptance in their consciousness of the old “fainÉant” philosophy of “laissez faire.” Had they any idea of the magnificent stimulus which work could give to the emptiest life! For health’s sake alone, they were willing sometimes to step out of the rut of their easy-going existence, to discipline their bodies at foreign watering-places, to take up courses of physical exercises, as prescribed by the fashionable crank of the moment. What they would do for their bodies, why should they not try for their souls! The one was surely as near decay as the other—the care of it, if only they would realize it, was ten thousand times more important! He had called them, perhaps, many hard names. There was one he could not call them. He could not call them cowards. On the contrary, he thought them the bravest people he had ever known, to live the lives they did, and await the end with the equanimity they showed. The equivalent of Hell, whatever it might be, had evidently no terrors for them....

He concluded his address abruptly, as his custom was, a few minutes later, and turned at once to leave the platform. But this afternoon an unexpected incident occurred. A man from the middle of the audience rose up and called to him by name.

Macheson, surprised, paused and turned round. It was Deyes who stood there, immaculately dressed in morning clothes, his long face pale as ever, his manner absolutely and entirely composed. He was swinging his eyeglass by its narrow black ribbon, and leaning a little forward.

“Sir,” he said, once more addressing Macheson, “as one of the audience whose shortcomings have so—er—profoundly impressed you, may I take the liberty of asking you a question? I ask it of you publicly because I imagine that there are many others here besides myself to whom your answer may prove interesting.”

Macheson came slowly to the front of the platform.

“Ask your question, sir, by all means,” he said.

Deyes bowed.

“You remind me, if I may be permitted to say so,” he continued, “of the prophet who went about with sackcloth and ashes on his head, crying ‘Woe! woe! woe!’ but who was either unable or unwilling to suggest any means by which that doleful cry might be replaced by one of more cheerful import. In plain words, sir, according to your lights—what must we do to be saved?”

There was a murmur of interest amongst the audience. There were many upon whom Macheson’s stinging words and direct denunciation had left their mark. They sat up eagerly and waited for his answer. He came to the edge of the platform and looked thoughtfully into their faces.

“In this city,” he said, “it should not be necessary for any one to ask that question. My answer may seem trite and hackneyed. Yet if you will accept it, you may come to the truth. Take a hansom cab, and drive as far, say, as Whitechapel. Walk—in any direction—for half a mile. Look into the faces of the men, the women and the children. Then go home and think. You will say at first nothing can be done for these people. They have dropped down too low, they have lost their humanity, they only justify the natural law of the survival of the fittest. Think again! A hemisphere may divide the East and the West of this great city; but these are human beings as you are a human being, they are your brothers and your sisters. Consider for a moment this natural law of yours. It is based upon the principle of the see-saw. Those who are down, are down because the others are up. Those men are beasts, those women are unsexed, those children are growing up with dirt upon their bodies and sin in their hearts, because you others are what you are. Because! Consider that. Consider it well, and take up your responsibility. They die that you may flourish! Do you think that the see-saw will be always one way? A revolution in this world, or justice in the next! Which would you rather face?”

Deyes bowed slightly.

“You have given me an answer, sir, for which I thank you,” he answered. “But you must allow me to remind you of the great stream of gold which flows all the while from the West to the East. Hospitals, mission houses, orphanages, colonial farms—are we to have no credit for these?”

“Very little,” Macheson answered, “for you give of your superfluity. Charity has little to do with the cheque-book. Besides, you must remember this. I am not here to-day to plead the cause of the East. I am here to talk to you of your own lives. I represent, if you are pleased to have it so, the Sandow of your spiritual body. I ask you to submit your souls to my treatment, as the professor of physical culture would ask for your bodies. This is not a matter of religion at all. It is a matter, if you choose to call it so, of philosophy. Your souls need exercise. You need a course of thinking and working for the good of some one else—not for your own benefit. Give up one sin in your life, and replace it with a whole-hearted effort to rescue one unfortunate person from sin and despair, and you will gain what I understand to be the desire of all of you—a new pleasure. Briefly, for your own sakes, from your own point of view, it is a personal charity which I am advocating, as distinguished from the charity of the cheque-book.”

“One more question, Mr. Macheson,” Deyes continued quietly. “Where do we find the lost souls—I mean upon what principle of selection do we work?”

“There are many excellent institutions through which you can come into touch with them,” Macheson answered. “You can hear of these through the clergyman of your own parish, or the Bishop of London.”

Deyes thanked him and sat down. The lecture was over, and the people slowly dispersed. Macheson passed into the room at the back of the platform. Drayton, who was waiting for him there, pushed over a box of cigarettes. He knew that Macheson loved to smoke directly he had finished talking.

“Macheson,” he said solemnly, “you’re a marvel. Why, in my country, I guess they’d come and scratch your eyes out before they’d stand plain speaking like that.”

Macheson was looking away into vacancy.

“I wonder,” he said softly, “if it does any good—any real good?”

Drayton, who was looking through a cash-book with gleaming eyes, opened his lips to speak, but thought better of it. He pointed instead towards the table.

The usual pile of notes was there—all the latest novelties in fancy stationery were represented there, crested, coroneted, scented. Macheson began to tear them open and as rapidly destroy them with a little gesture of disgust. They were mostly of the same type. The girls were all so anxious to do a little good, so tired of the wearisome round of Society, wouldn’t Mr. Macheson be very kind and give them some personal advice? Couldn’t he meet them somewhere, or might they come and see him? They did hope that he wouldn’t think them bold! It would be such a help to talk to him. The married ladies were bolder still. They felt the same craving for advice, but their proposals were more definite. Mr. Macheson must come and see them! They would be quite alone (underlined), there should be no one else there to worry him. Then followed times and addresses. One lady, whose coronet and motto were familiar to him, would take no denial. He was to come that afternoon. Her carriage was waiting at the side door and would bring him directly to her. Macheson looked up quickly. Through the window he could see a small brougham, with cockaded footman and coachman, waiting outside. He swept all the notes into the flames.

“For Heaven’s sake, go and send that carriage away, Drayton,” he begged.

Drayton laughed and disappeared. On the table there remained one more note—a square envelope, less conspicuous perhaps than the others, but more distinguished-looking. Macheson broke the seal. On half a sheet of paper were scrawled these few lines only.

He started and caught up his hat. In a few minutes he was on his way to Berkeley Square.