CHAPTER VI


While Alicia Livingstone fought with her imagination in accounting
for Lindsay's absence from the theatre on the first night of a notable
presentation by Miss Hilda Howe, he sat with his knees crossed on the
bench farthest back and the corner obscurest of the Salvation Army
Headquarters in Bentinck Street. It had become his accustomed place;
sitting there he had begun to feel like the adventurer under Niagara,
it was the only spot from which he could observe, try to understand and
cope with the torrential nature of his passion. Nearer to the fair charm
of his kneeling Laura, in the uncertain flare of the kerosene lamp and
the sound of the big drum, he grew blind, lost count, was carried away.
His persistent refusal of a better place also profited him in that it
brought to Ensign Sand and the other "officers" the divination that he
was one of those shyly anxious souls who have to be enticed into the
Kingdom of Heaven with wariness, and they made a great pretence of not
noticing him, going on with the exercises just as if he were not there,
a consideration which he was able richly to enhance when the plate came
round. After his first contribution, Mrs. Sand regarded his spiritual
interests with almost superstitious reverence, according them the
fullest privacy of which she was capable. The gravity which the
gentleman attached to his situation was sufficiently testified by the
"amount"; Mrs. Sand never wanted better evidence than the amount. Even
Laura, acting doubtless under instructions, seemed disposed to hold
away from him in her prayers and exhortations; only a very occasional
allusion passed her lips which Duff could appropriate. These, when they
fell, he gathered and set like flowers in his tenderest consciousness,