analysis of religious appeal to the emotions, but chiefly heard that
clear music above a sordid din, "Hallelujah!" "Hallelujah!"



CHAPTER IV


When Alicia Livingstone, almost believing she liked it, drove to Number
Three, Lal Behari's Lane, and left cards upon Miss Hilda Howe, she was
only partially rewarded. Through the plaster gate-posts, badly in want
of repair, and bearing, sunk in one of them, a marble slab announcing
"Residence with Board," she perceived the squalid attempt the place made
at respectability, the servants in dirty livery salaaming curiously,
the over-fed squirrel in a cage in the door, the pair of damaged wicker
chairs in the porch, suggesting the easiest intercourse after dinner,
the general discoloration. She observed with irritation that it was
a down-at-heels shrine for such a divinity, in spite of its six dusty
crotons in crumbling plaster urns, but the irritation was rather at her
own repulsion to the place than at any inconsistency it presented. What
she demanded and expected of herself was that Number Three, Lal Behari's
Lane should be pleasing, interesting, acceptable on its merits as a
cheap Calcutta boarding-house. She found herself so unable to perceive
its merits that it was almost a relief to see nothing of Miss Howe
either; Hilda had gone to rehearsal, to the "dance-house" the servant
said, eyeing the unusual landau. Alicia rolled back into streets with
Christian names, distressed by an uncertainty as to whether her visit
had been a disappointment or an escape. By the next day, however, she
was well pulled together in favour of the former conclusion--she could
nearly always persuade herself of such things in time--and wrote a frank